Are Right-wing Extremists infiltrating Federal, State and Local Police Forces?

phattonez said:

That's nonsense. People who are being victimized have every right to defend themselves, especially when police have shown that they're not willing to shut down antifa violence.

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Yes, they can and must defend themselves.

Allowing partisan private citizens to assume police powers is a far different matter. Though private citizens can perform citizens arrests after being attacked, the State has a strong interest in preventing private citizens from making pre-emptive arrests or "arresting" individuals who did not actually commit a crime.

In short, the actual police need to closely examine what happened. If (key word) a group of private citizens was falsely claiming to have police authority, making pre-emptive "citizens arrests" or placing people under "citizens arrest" simply because they were in the area, they need to get prosecuted. The political orientation of the group is not important.

Evilroddy said:

An interesting article describing a disturbing symbiosis between police forces and alt-right, paramilitary, "security" personnel in Portland, Oregon. Portland police and Department of Homeland Security police let paramilitary security personnel for an alt-right march take the lead in identifying, chasing down, restraining and cuffing left-wing protestors. The police are alleged to have simply acted as an aid to the security personnel in at least three cases where protestors were violently arrested. The article asks if these police forces have been coopted by infiltration of right wing ideology, authoritarian tendencies and now share these biases.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/08/portland-alt-right-milita-police-dhs-arrest-protester/

I'm sure the courts will have a say in the legality of these arrests and I hope that more journalists investigate the possiblity of an endemic spread of right-wing sympathies and deference to alt-right, non-police, security personnel during protests. This alleged politicisation, coupled with the accelerating of the militarisation of US police forces is a very worrying trend. More people should be aware of this resisting these trends if they are truly happening or liberty will soon be imperilled.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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I don't see anything nefarious going on there; I've helped cops a couple of times in my life, just like this Todd Kelly did. I think that the politics of this are a separate issue.

During the BLM matter riots in Oakland protesters wound up help cops arrest the Black Bloc anarchists who were stirring up all the trouble and violence, so I don't think this event is anything unusual in that light.

joG said:

I think that the infiltration of the body politic and judiciary by radical liberals has been much more of the problem facing the country.

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You mean the socially-liberal Neoconservatives and establishment politicians gamed the body politic and judiciary and gave birth to the Alt-Right, actually...

Evilroddy said:

RetiredUSN:

No. However nor do I support paramilitaries of any ideological leaning from taking the law into their own hands and acting as if they were police. The true police should have arrested the Antifa protesters and any paramilitaries who used violence against protesters at the same time. The police cannot be seen to take sides in societal disputes or they are no longer police - they become a politically motivated gendarmerie, which is truly dangerous.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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But you said in your OP that they were police officers.

How could they act like police if they are police?

Can you clarify what you are really complaining about here?

Mason66 said:

But you said in your OP that they were police officers.

How could they act like police if they are police?

Can you clarify what you are really complaining about here?

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Mason66:

The paramilitary march security personnel were not police and did not have police powers through deputisation. They were private citizens appointed by the march organisers to act as security personnel. Many were armoured with protective ballistic armour, military style camouflage battle dress and some were armed with firearms. The security personnel were NOT police.

I reread my OP and it seemed pretty clear but I will try to clarrify. The issue was that private citizens, who were working as security personnel for an alt-right march in Portland, were ordering protesters and bystanders to move and then initiating physically aggressive arrests rather than asking the many police present to do so. The real police were standing by and not stopping this, despite the very large number of true police present at the march/protest. The true police then acted as an auxiliary to the march security personnel and aided the private security personnel who had initiated the arrests and had used physical force against non-compliant protesters and bystanders. However, when protesters called on the true police to arrest the security personnel who were physically and verbally intimidating them, the police did nothing. So the issues are:

1) The private security personnel overstepped their citizen's mandate and initiated pre-emptive and kinetic arrests which they carried out using physical force while real police watched on passively.
2) That the police did not initiate the arrests but rather that they acted as a defacto auxiliary to the march security personnel who had no police powers.
3) That the real police did not answer requests by protestors and bystanders to stop the march security personnel from using physical force against protestors, but that the true police did aid the march security personnel in making forceful arrests.
4) That march security personnel were applying restraints (Teflon ties) to arrested protestors which is beyond their mandate as citizens to do and that the police supplied these ties.
5) Given the allegations in points 1-4 above, did the real police show a bias towards the alt-right march security personnel by supporting their actions and was such an alleged bias the result of alt-right sympathies and sympathisers employed by the local, state and federal police forces present at the march?

I hope that clears things up for anyone who is unclear what I posted above.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.