{news} GP RELEASE Greens blast military-style police measures, drug-war violation of citizens' rights

Mon Aug 18 17:34:05 EDT 2008

----- Original Message -----

From: "Scott McLarty"
To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
Subject: [usgp-dx] GP RELEASE Greens blast military-style police
measures, drug-war violation of citizens' rights
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:51:56 +0000

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, August 18, 2008

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell 202-904-7614,
mclarty at greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene at gp.org

Greens call military-style police measures and violation of
citizens' rights a "breakdown of law"

• Greens condemn curfews, anticonstitutional police harassment of
innocent citizens in Arkansas and DC, and the War on Drugs as
"self-defeating" in efforts to eliminate crime

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party candidates and leaders called the
24-hour curfew imposed on the city of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas,
a gross violation of the rights of local citizens and a symptom of
the rapid growth of unrestrained police power over the past two
decades.

Politicians and law enforcement officials have justified such
measures as part of the war on drugs. Greens have endorsed an
immediate end to the drug war, calling it a catastrophic failure.

"A city that hands its police force a license to trash the
constitutional rights of its citizens is not a city that is
upholding law and order and protecting its citizens. On the
contrary, unlimited police power is a complete breakdown of the
law," said Joshua Drake, Arkansas Green Party nominee for Congress
(4th District) (http://www.drake08.com).

The curfew in Helena-West Helena
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26171820/), a response to the crime
rate in some neighborhoods, empowers officers armed with military
rifles to stop and interrogate citizens without warrent or any
semblance of probable cause.

A similar curfew has been imposed on Washington, DC's Trinidad
neighborhood, where the police have established checkpoints
allowing officers to question all drivers entering the area.
Citizens must convince the police they have a "legitimate reason"
for their presence in the neighborhood.

"These interrogations and checkpoints are comparable to police
practices in authoritarian regimes and especially apartheid-era
South Africa -- which is even more ominous given the fact the
residents of these new 'Red Zones' are mostly African American and
poor," said Rosa Clemente, the Green Party's nominee for Vice
President of the United States (http://www.rosaclemente.com).
"Such measures also recall the repression by police and private
security firms in post-Katrina New Orleans, which accompanied the
obstruction and expulsion of mostly poor and black residents from
their homes."

"These policies have only empowered criminal gangs involved in the
drug trade, just as Prohibition fed the growth of organized crime.
The ACLU is right -- two of our most important freedoms, the right
of mobility and protection against warrantless search and seizure,
are being nullified for the sake of the disastrous war on drugs, in
violation of local law and the US Constitution," added Ms.
Clemente. (August 8 letter from the ACLU of Arkansas to
Helena-West Helena Mayor J.F. Valley:
http://www.acluarkansas.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=4)

Greens noted that curfews and harassment of citizens reflect the
militarization of civilian police departments enacted by the
Clinton Administration in the mid 1990s, with officers trained in
military tactics to fight the drug war.

Along with police militarization and the expanded war on drugs, the
Nixon, Bush Sr., Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations also
oversaw the rapid growth of the private prison industry, which
profits from filling up prison cells with more and more inmates.
The outcome has been record incarceration of US citizens,
especially of young African American and Latino men locked up on
nonviolent offenses and plea-bargaining deals.

"Democratic and Republican politicians are equally responsible for
the transformation of civilian police into militias," said Abel
Tomlinson, Green nominee for Congress in Arkansas' 3rd District
(http://www.abelforcongress.com). "The drug war has very little to
do with drugs -- it's about control, coercion, and power. It's
about money. America won't get sane drug laws and law enforcement
until enough Greens get elected to public office to overturn these
self-defeating, unconstitutional policies."

The Green Party supports the principle that governments can best
address crime and drug use by promoting local self-determination
and residents' ownership of their own communities, observing
citizens' rights, and recognizing that addiction is above all a
medical problem.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
• Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information:
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for
the White House http://www.runcynthiarun.org

2008 Green National Convention, July 10-13 in Chicago, Illinois
http://www.greenparty2008.org

~ END ~

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******************************************
Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282
 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT.
BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com

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