CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Pointing out that local police have a critical role to play in a tense, unfolding drama over the removal of Confederate statues from the City’s parks, The Rutherford Institute is warning that heavy-handed tactics, militarized equipment, excess force and an authoritarian approach to law-and-order by police could …

“Policing is broken… It has evolved as a paramilitary, bureaucratic, organizational arrangement that distances police officers from the communities they’ve been sworn to protect and serve. When we have shooting after shooting after shooting that most people would define as at least questionable, it’s time to look, not just at …

“We’ve reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspect’s consent. And these procedures aren’t to nab kingpins or cartels, but people who at worst are hiding …

“It’s 4 in the morning, there’s headlights that are shining into your house; there’s a number of different officers that are now on the premises; they’re wearing tactical gear; they have weapons; and they approach your front door. Do you think that the ordinary citizen in that situation feels that …

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project. Just after swearing in Alabama drug warrior Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, President Trump signed three new executive orders to pursue a ‘law and order’ agenda. One order seeks to protect police from violence, setting up a prelude to mandatory minimum sentencing …

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project. Police and National Guard forces began raiding camps at Standing Rock Wednesday afternoon, not long after reports stated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be granting an easement necessary for completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Reports from the scene suggested …

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project. Standing Rock — (RT) Protests over development of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota led to more than 125 arrests and a highway blockade over the weekend, as pipeline opponents claimed “unceded territory” in the direct path of construction. Meanwhile, …

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project. Police in the United States arrest more people for the nonviolent, utterly harmless non-crime of cannabis possession than for murder, rape, armed robbery — in fact, all violent crime — combined. A new study by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human …

“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” ― Edward R. Murrow We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a …

Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project. Are police necessary? Although this existential question often produces a knee-jerk ‘of course they are, who would protect us?’ a growing call for the abolition of police — and working examples to back it up — deserves more than scornful dismissal, particularly …