By Gamal Hennessy
There are pockets of American law enforcement using the tactics of totalitarian dictatorships. The New York Times recently published a story on a Justice Department investigation on the police departments in Louisiana. According to the report, police held people for days without any justification or even accusing them of a crime. The pattern of “investigative holds” (i.e. government sponsored kidnapping) focused on minority populations.
“Officers have routinely arrested hundreds of citizens annually without probable cause, strip-searching them and denying them contact with their family and lawyers for days — all in an unconstitutional attempt to force cooperation with detectives who finally admitted they were operating on a mere “hunch” or “feeling.””
Systemic abuse by the police against minority communities is fundamental to ‘Merican culture. If killing people for flimsy reasons is condoned, and the prison industrial complex profits from mass incarceration, then being held in jail for a “hunch” doesn’t seem that bad. But when the Justice Department answers to Trumpzilla, how many of these abuses will be investigated and stopped? What would prevent the Trumpocalypse from adopting government sponsored kidnapping as a political tool to intimidate and remove elements of society that don’t fall in line? How soon will it be before isolated pockets of secret police become the norm?