Asset forfeiture is the practice by which police agencies grab the assets – cash, cars, boats, homes – of suspected criminals. Designed originally to fight drug kingpins, asset forfeiture has morphed into a means by which agencies bolster their budgets. The overwhelming percentage of forfeiture cases involve people who have not been convicted or even accused of a crime.

In one legal case, an agency took away a person’s car because it was used in the commission of a crime, even though the owner wasn’t involved in the crime.

Senate Bill 443 by Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, was designed to stop the types of abuses mentioned above, without hindering the ability of police agencies to grab the illicit proceeds of drug dealers. It mainly requires police to gain a conviction before taking a person’s property. The bill was moving ahead with strong bipartisan support last year, but then law-enforcement lobbyists derailed it the week before a final Assembly vote. They argued primarily that the reforms would cost their agencies a significant amount of money that’s used for crime fighting and that passage of the reform would stifle their ability to target drug kingpins.

Mitchell revived the bill this year and recently hammered out a compromise. The California Police Chiefs Association and other law-enforcement groups dropped their opposition. In a statement, the chiefs’ association lauded “a compromise that enhances safeguards on Californians’ rights, while ensuring law enforcement has the tools necessary to combat the gangs and drug traffickers damaging our communities.” Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union of California seemed equally pleased with the compromise.

MORE ON THE ISSUE:

Diverse coalition of supporters

Broad overview of asset forfeiture

Legislative compromise on the issue

California actually imposes some of the toughest restrictions on asset forfeiture in the nation. Among other restrictions, the law requires a conviction, for instance, for forfeiture when the value of the property is under $25,000. But problems remain because state and local agencies circumvent the state’s law by partnering with federal agencies under a program known as “equitable sharing.” The partnership lets them operate under looser federal standards – and then the locals split the forfeiture proceeds with the federal agencies.

The bill – in its original and amended form – limits the ability of California agencies to do an end run around state law. “The bill would prohibit state or local law enforcement agencies from transferring seized property to a federal agency seeking adoption by the federal agency of the seized property,” according to SB443’s official summary. “The bill would further prohibit state or local agencies from receiving an equitable share from a federal agency of specified seized property if a conviction for the underlying offenses is not obtained … .” The local and state agencies could still participate in joint projects with the federal government and could still receive proceeds – but only if they first secured a criminal conviction in the underlying case.

Under the compromise, however, state officials would not need a conviction to seize “cash or negotiable instruments” above $40,000, whereas the original bill would have required a conviction for all cash seizures. Eighty percent of cash seizures are for less than $40,000, so the compromise protects the vast majority of people who have their cash seized. The average seizure in California is slightly above $5,000. Police agencies say the larger cash amounts usually are the result of drug deals, so the agreement makes sense to both sides. Furthermore, the bill still requires a conviction for the taking of property valued at more than $40,000, such as houses or cars.

That latter point is significant. In one highly publicized case in Anaheim, officials tried to take a commercial building valued at $1.5 million from a couple after one of its tenants was accused of selling $37 in marijuana. The authorities dropped that forfeiture case amid bad publicity, but SB443 is designed to halt those types of takings – where, say, a valuable property is seized simply because a drug crime might have been committed on the premises. The legislation also requires additional reporting from agencies that use the forfeiture process.

The goal is to stop what critics refer to as “policing for profit.” A study from the Drug Policy Alliance reported that some cities “were found to be prioritizing asset forfeiture over general public safety concerns, like response times and sufficient patrol officers.” The report referred to “multiple instances of cash grabs by law enforcement being incentivized over deterring drug sales, wherein police wait until a drug sale concludes and then seize the cash proceeds of the sale rather than the drugs, as drugs must be destroyed and are of no monetary value to law enforcement.”

As Reason’s Scott Shackford pointed out, “As California cities dealt with drops in revenue during the recession over the past decade … participation in the federal program skyrocketed.” But reformers say law enforcement priorities should be shaped by public-safety concerns rather than monetary goals.

Presumably, the final deal will still let agencies grab the dollars of real drug kingpins, while leaving the rest of our property alone – or at least requiring that residents are convicted of wrongdoing before losing it. Both sides believe the right balance has been struck. We’ll see if that’s enough to move the bill through the rest of the legislative process and secure the governor’s signature, but this was a major victory reformers.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He is based in Sacramento. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Thomas Hawk / flickr

After years spent under the glare of judicial scrutiny, California’s effort to clean up its prison system has run up against a fresh wave of challenges and controversy. Lawsuits, violence and Draconian measures have all increased costs while chipping away at support from the public and policymakers.

‘Potty watches’

Critics have no shortage of policies to go after. One stratagem under fire is the so-called “potty watch,” wherein prisoners are restrained, as ABC News reported, “for at least 72 hours or until they complete at least three closely watched bowel movements” — with guards investigating the feces for contraband. “Something is recovered from about four out of 10 inmates.”

The techniques used for restraining prisoners have become a particular focus of criticism. “Suspected smugglers are strip-searched, then placed in an isolation cell in which the toilet has been covered and the water turned off,” as ABC News noted. “Their clothing is taped shut at the waist and legs to prevent them from physically reaching body cavities, their hands are cuffed to a chain around their waist and their legs may be shackled. If they fight back, they can be strapped down by the arms and legs.”

A drug epidemic

But the drug problem in California’s prisons has become so severe that reform would have to strike at that challenge. Overdose rates have now tripled the national average for state prisons, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “The rate of drug overdose deaths in California prisons climbed between 2006 and 2013, the most recent year available, according to an annual death review for the federal court-appointed receiver who controls prison medical care.”

As the Associated Press reported earlier this summer, analysts have not been convinced that millions in spending and “the tough steps state officials took this year to stop illicit drugs from getting into prisons are having any effect, though they are prompting criticism from civil rights advocates.” Anecdotal evidence has cast a pall on screenings. Riverside resident Tania Gamboa, visiting her brother at Kern Valley state prison, faced a harrowing procedure, the AP observed:

She initially laughed when the ion machine tested positive for exposure to heroin, saying she doesn’t even drink alcohol. But she was crying after she was required to strip naked in front of two female correctional officers and squat to demonstrate that she was not concealing drugs.

Rising tensions

Drugs have become emblematic of California’s prison woes, which extend to the broader matter of simply maintaining order and safety for the incarcerated. A recent prison riot in Solano left guards making a grisly discovery of a murdered and disemboweled inmate’s body five hours after the victim first went missing.

And in an effort to save water, officials have turned off the taps on prisoners’ typical outdoor showers. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told the Los Angeles Times “all showers outside of those in the housing units have been shut down as part of the statewide mandate to reduce water use by 25% due to the drought.”

Without delay, inmates’ attorneys bundled the action into a complaint brought against the state. “The aqua austerity in prison yards is included in a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions on California’s death row, alongside complaints about the prolonged use of solitary confinement, inadequate food and a lack of due process,” the Times confirmed.

Some progress

Despite the battery of difficulties, the Golden State has managed to move forward with some key prison reforms. This month, California regained control of its own prison health care system, following ten long years of federal receivership in the wake of shocking failures. Last decade, as the AP reported, “a federal judge found that conditions in the state’s prisons were so poor that an average of an inmate each week was dying of medical malpractice or neglect. A receiver was appointed to run the system in 2006. Since then, the state has spent $2 billion for new prison medical facilities, doubled its annual prison health care budget to nearly $1.7 billion and reduced its prison population by more than 40,000 inmates.”

Meanwhile, facing another lawsuit over its usage of solitary confinement, the state has dialed back its reliance on the practice. “Inmates may no longer be put in isolation for refusing a cell assignment, for example, one of several prison infractions for which solitary confinement punishment has been reduced or dropped. And those being disciplined with segregation can cut that punishment in half with good behavior,” according to the Times.

According to CB Insights, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Northern California is the headquarters of six of the 10 American commercial drone companies that have attracted the most venture capital.” The economic consequences of drones’ ascendance in Silicon Valley have attracted attention along with the cash. Drone firms “are creating high-paying work for engineers, including those designing ever more sophisticated software to operate the machines,” the Times noted.

But, as the Times observed, the Silicon Valley pattern of big innovations in small groups was likely to repeat itself with drones:

“Competition from Chinese manufacturers has already pushed 3D Robotics and some other American drone companies to make their hardware in other countries. Anderson’s company has an engineering center in San Diego, but manufactures its drones in Tijuana and Shenzhen, China, where there is cheap labor.”

Hopes and fears

California’s unique challenges have supplied drone manufacturers with an immediate market and proving ground. Given the state’s vast size, rugged terrain, and drought-era risk of massive fires, drones have emerged as a new source of hope for keeping residents safe. Taking inspiration from their own approach to monitoring outer space for important events, Bay Area astrophysicists have embarked on a project called Fuego — short for “Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit.”

“The idea is to enable early location and identification of fires using drones, planes, and satellites mounted with special infrared cameras,” Wired reported; “once fully operational the system could spot new wildfires anywhere in the Western US barely three minutes after they start.

“‘All year round is going to be fire season now,’ says Carlton Pennypacker, an astrophysicist at UC Berkeley and lead researcher on Fuego. ‘That makes this more urgent.'”

But the city of Huntington Beach recently provided the backdrop to a video dramatizing the legal and cultural uncertainty around drones. As the Orange County Register observed, the viral clip caught one resident ruining what a local drone company called an instructional video. After “yelling that he’ll be angry if ‘you put that over my house,'” the man sent a hovering drone crashing to the ground with a single swat of his t-shirt. “I don’t even think that’s legal,” he added.

Lucky7drones, makers of the $1,000-plus drone, have filed a police report. In the absence of federal regulation, the Register noted, municipalities have crafted rules restricting or banning drones’ use, while Huntington Beach, among others, has done neither.

Drones’ awkward, changing status in California has aroused residents’ hopes and fears in a complex combination. In Southern California’s beach communities, for instance, drones have begun to emerge as a solution to the age-old threat of shark attacks.

But with the new knowledge they afford has come a new way of sizing up the risks of everyday life.

“A new drone that is being utilized by Southland lifeguards reveals a chilling look at how many sharks are just feet from the shoreline at one beach,” CBS Los Angeles reported. Within minutes of launch, a Seal Beach lifeguard told CBS LA, “we knew there were 10 to 12 sharks all in the Surfside area.” The impact on beachgoers was also swift — calling into question whether Californians’ more carefree attitude toward sharks could survive the advent of drone patrols:

“‘I was planning on going surfing tomorrow and definitely not now,’ one woman said, while another said: ‘Sharks are kind of like my biggest fear so that’s like very daunting for me.'”

Protecting privacy

If Californians have had to give added thought to their new status as watchers, the rise of drones has also forced them to consider how more often they’re willing to be watched. In an effort to shore up the state’s privacy protections against invasive drone use, Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, has pushed a new piece of legislation through several key committees. The bill, AB56, “would place strict regulations on law enforcement use of drones, and prohibit drone surveillance of private property without a warrant in most situations,” according to the Tenth Amendment Center.

Under proposed regulations, the Center noted, only so-called exigent circumstances, like natural disasters, public emergencies or the imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm, would permit law enforcement to deploy drones without a warrant or the express permission of property owners.

The city of Rialto is an odd mix of nice new subdivisions, industrial grayness and rundown neighborhoods. When I covered the city as an Inland Empire news columnist in the late 1990s, it had a distinct inferiority complex. How much so? Some residents looked up to Fontana to the west as a city to emulate.

So now that city leaders are in the national spotlight for a good reason, here’s hoping they enjoy it. (And that they stop looking up to Fontana.) The reason is an extremely smart bit of public policy that leads to far better law-enforcement results. The New York Times told the story well  in August:

“RIALTO, Calif. — ‘Get on the ground,’ Sgt. Chris Hice instructed. The teenage suspects sat on the curb while Sergeant Hice handcuffed them.

“’Cross your legs; don’t get up; put your legs back,’ he said, before pointing to the tiny camera affixed to his Oakley sunglasses. ‘You’re being videotaped.’

“It is a warning that is transforming many encounters between residents and police in this sunbaked Southern California city: ‘You’re being videotaped.’

“Rialto has become the poster city for this high-tech measure intended to police the police since a federal judge last week applauded its officer camera program in the ruling that declared New York’s stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional. Rialto is one of the few places where the impact of the cameras has been studied systematically.

“In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.”

‘One-third of searches were performed unconstitutionally’

Now the RPD are getting another shoutout, this team from Reason magazine’s Ron Bailey. After detailing Rialto’s success, Bailey notes that it’s not surprising, based on what we know about police behavior:

“… a 2004 study in Criminology and Public Policy by criminologists Stephen Mastrofski from George Mason University and Jonathan Gould from American University evaluated direct observations of police searches in a medium-sized American city. They conservatively estimated that nearly one-third of police searches were performed unconstitutionally and almost none of those unconstitutional searches came to the attention of the courts.

“Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), calls police-worn video cameras ‘a win/win for both the public and the police.’ Win/win because video recordings help shield officers from false accusations of abuse as well as protecting the public against police misconduct.”

But guess who objects to having a “win/win”? Police unions that don’t want the scrutiny and accountability, unions whose leaders know that a significant number of cops routinely behave badly.

Now here’s a new wrinkle: The Ars Technica tech website reported last week that Boston police are furious about the idea that cruiser GPS devices are going to be used to make sure officers are where they are supposed to be.

“What’s the logic to putting in such a tracking system? It lets dispatchers know where officers are in real time rather than having them wait for a response via radio. Unsurprisingly, some cops don’t like the new change.

“’No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?’ said one officer … . ‘If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say, “Why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes?” It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.’”

As the police-state types like to say, if officers don’t like being watched, they shouldn’t worry. If they’re not doing anything wrong, they won’t get in trouble.

SACRAMENTO — Two Republican members of the California Assembly recently authored resolutions encouraging Congress to halt the eavesdropping on the America people by the National Security Agency. Both resolutions were smacked down Tuesday in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, whose hearings I attended. The Democratic majority refused even to vote on the resolutions, claiming more information was needed.

“What this says is, ‘We don’t want to error on the side of liberty,’” Assemblyman Tim Donnelly told me. A Republican from Twin Peaks, he authored Assembly Joint Resolution 27 to encourage Congress to pass and President Obama to sign into law the “Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act.”

AJR 26, by Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach, calls on the president and Congress to make the protection of civil liberties and national security equal priorities, and to immediately discontinue any practices contrary to the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. That amendment allows searches only with a warrant from a judge.

Leading up to the hearing, both bills had bipartisan support, the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a Democratic co-author.

However, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, removed his name as co-author of Donnelly’s bill, and strongly recommended to committee members they not vote on the resolution.

Donnelly attributed Wieckowski’s change of heart to a case of partisan politics, specifically on orders “from the powers that be.” According to Donnelly, Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, was not happy Wieckowski had his name on a Donnelly bill.

I called Wieckowski, who is an attorney, to discuss why he removed his name from AJR 27, but did not receive a return call.

What’s this all about?

In June, Edward Snowden, an American computer specialist who worked as a contractor for the NSA, admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, along with documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts, to the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper. When the news broke, Americans were in an uproar. Charges of spying on Americans were levied against the NSA by politicians and civil libertarian groups.

The NSA had obtained direct access to Google, Facebook, Apple and other U.S. Internet companies, according to the documents first provided by Snowden to the Guardian.

The NSA’s extensive access was originally enabled by changes to U.S. surveillance law introduced under President George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. And NSA access was renewed under President Obama in December 2012.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment guarantees, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Donnelly called the NSA spying practice “abusive” and “tyrannical,” and said his LIBERT-E Act had bipartisan support from hundreds of groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Republican Liberty Caucus.

NSA audit confirms excessive snooping

There have been countless news stories about the NSA collecting and storing Americans’ Internet, phone and financial data, while claiming the information is needed to prevent or stop terrorist activity.

A May 2012 audit of the NSA found 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications, the Washington Post recently reported. “The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.”

Allen said, “This revelation that the NSA has been collecting these records from unaware American citizens and ignoring court orders to cease their activities is raising questions and distrust amongst the public regarding the constitutionality of the government’s actions. AJR 26 appeals to the federal government to equally prioritize the need for national security against terrorist threats and the protection of every American citizen’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches.”

What’s a government to do?

According to several news stories, more than one billion records a day are collected by the NSA in the name of “national security.” The excuse is that all that data is needed to preempt terrorist attacks.

Yet with all the federal muscle and high-tech surveillance available to the NSA, it was a citizen who found the Boston Bombers after three people were killed, and more than 260 were injured.

Both Allen and Donnelly reiterated to the Judiciary Committee they understand the federal government is responsible for protecting Americans from threats to national security, but must balance that with also protecting citizens’ constitutional rights to privacy.

“Our country was founded on the principles of protecting individual liberties and the inalienable rights of the people from the infringement of overreaching governments,” Allen said at the hearing. “Government should be transparent, strive for the highest level of integrity, and be held accountable to the public.”

But Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park, said there just wasn’t sufficient information for him to be able to make a decision. Other Democratic members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee echoed this sentiment, including Assembly members Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrence and Wieckowski — all attorneys.

By Katy Grimes

Life in America would be far different if at the end of every day you had to report in to a federal government agency where you had been, who you met with and talked to, who you called and who called you, who you emailed, and what websites you visited.

A chill would take over the land of the free.

In an interview, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, said the surveillance the National Security Agency has been conducting on all Americans for the past decade is not much different. And, Allen said, it’s a violation of American’s rights, and needs to stop.

To begin a conversation among Legislatures across the country, Allen introduced Assembly Joint Resolution 26, calling upon the President and Congress of the United States to make the protection of civil liberties and national security equal priorities, and to immediately discontinue any practices that are contrary to the 4^th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Allen’s resolution is the first of its kind in the nation.

“Our country was founded on the principles of protecting individual liberties and the inalienable rights of the people from the infringement of overreaching governments,” Allen said.

“There cannot be a compromise between national security and honoring our commitment to  American citizens through the Constitution. Both are equally important and neither should take precedent over the other,” said Allen. “Government should be transparent, strive for the highest level of integrity, and be held accountable to the public.”

The recent reports of the National Security Agency collecting and storing Internet, phone and financial data of American citizens, under the auspices of an alleged attempt to stop terrorist activity, is overreach Allen said.

“This revelation that the NSA has been collecting these records from unaware American citizens has raised questions amongst the public about the constitutionality of the government’s actions,” Allen said. “I think Americans would be okay with any legal surveillance plan with a high degree of transparency.”

AJR 26 includes a quote from James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, “Father of the Constitution” for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the Bill of Rights: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

AJR 26 appeals to the federal government to equally prioritize the need for national security against terrorist threats, along with the civil liberties and protection of every American citizen’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. AJR 26 also acknowledges with the high level of technology available today, the personal information of the citizenry can be easily obtained and cataloged, which is why it is incumbent upon all individuals to be vigilant in securing our civil liberties.

Allen added, “Our government should always work to protect Americans from threats to national security, but we must not cast aside our Constitution in the process.”

By Chris Reed

The fallout from the April 15 terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon continues. Initially, the primary reaction was tired partisan attempts to imply the fault was either somehow a) the president’s fault because of his foreign policy or b) the Republicans’ fault because of the sequester. Then the focus was on the mainstream media’s series of gigantic mistakes on alleged key developments in the investigation — something longtime MSM critics found both enjoyable and unsurprising.

But now that one suspect has been killed and another is in custody, and the big thinkers are divining what it all means and how we should react as a nation, watch out.

At least for civil libertarians and for fiscally sane policy wonks who watch local government in California and elsewhere, the consequences of the attack are likely to be troubling and disappointing.

Enabling those who seek executive power without limits

On the first front, the attack has encouraged the advocates of the surveillance state and emboldened those who believe limits essentially no longer apply to the power of the executive branch.

It is one thing to believe that every effort should be made to track the communications and activities of suspected terrorists. But it is another thing to believe that there should be literally no limit on the amount of information the government is allowed to clandestinely collect on everyone else, even the obviously innocent. And it is wholly another thing to believe that the U.S. government has the right to kill not just foreign suspects but U.S. citizens abroad without trial or due process — especially when those Americans are not engaged in activity posing an imminent threat to U.S. interests.

Yet neither party truly opposes this assertion of near-unlimited government power. Democratic objections to the George W. Bush administration’s excesses vanished when he left office — even as the Obama administration in many ways exceeded Bush 43’s overreach. Republican objections to Obama’s policies — at least from GOP veterans who were mega-hawks post-9/11 — seem expedient and insincere.

Just six weeks ago, however, Sen. Rand Paul demonstrated that the American public didn’t want unlimited government power and a president to be judge, jury and executioner. The first-term Kentucky Republican’s filibuster over the Obama administration’s stunning claim of unlimited drone assassination power won broad support from the U.S. public, according to polls, and prompted a rare concession from the Obama administration: Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement that the federal government did not have the right to rub out Americans in America who weren’t threatening anyone.

For civil liberties, war on terror worse than normal war

But Boston has blunted Rand Paul’s message. The case for a government security apparatus unconcerned with constitutional niceties once again seems strong to many shaken Americans.

The warnings of my former Orange County Register colleague, the late Alan W. Bock, seem more prophetic with every year.

In the run-up to the beginning of the U.S.-Iraq war in 2003, Bock told me that wars are always an occasion for governments to vastly increase their power and to expand the dimensions of what is allowable conduct, but that the war on terrorism might be particularly destructive to liberty.

Bock believed that the undefined, apparently never-ending U.S. global war on terror triggered by 9/11 might leave the federal government in a default mode in which it never stopped seeking expanded power.

A decade later, a Republican president and a Democratic president alike have shown Bock’s fears were valid.

When veneration of public-safety officers carries a literal price

The other fallout to fear from the Boston terrorist attacks may seem far more parochial and seemingly minor. But it is neither petty nor minor. It is the strong possibility that the heroism of the “first responders” to the bombings will translate into additional political clout for public-safety unions who are in many cases the main threat to the financial stability of cities and counties in California and across America.

The veneration going to law-enforcement officers and firefighters is similar to that accorded our military service members since the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91. But those in the military haven’t been able to use this veneration as a club to win labor agreements that provide automatic raises from the government even as it pursues bankruptcy, as is the case with public-safety workers in San Bernardino.

After 9/11, this veneration reached extraordinary extremes. It provided political cover in an era in which pension spiking and manipulation at the behest of police and fire unions exploded at the local government level, enabled by the dot-com boom filling pension-fund coffers. In that period, when I wrote skeptically about public safety pensions at the Register, the terrible events of that Tuesday morning in Manhattan in late summer of 2001 were often thrown back at me. This was nothing new in Orange County, where public-safety employees know they will get the benefit of the doubt because of their images.

Now the veneration that police and fire personnel count on is revving up once again.

But while appreciation for the heroism of first responders is appropriate, political exploitation of that appreciation to pry money from tottering cities and counties is crass and depressing. Unfortunately, based on what we’ve learned in California, such exploitation is an absolute certainty in coming months and years.

For those who believe in liberty and solvent local government, the fallout from April 15 is to be dreaded.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO -– Don’t you hate it when life starts to resemble one of those bleak, futuristic dystopian movies? I’m thinking of an almost unfathomable reality –- local and state governments are joining the feds in buying unmanned aerial vehicles -– drones -– to patrol the skies.

Many uses for drones are innocent enough, such as for scientific endeavors and search-and-rescue missions, but many cities are grabbing Department of Homeland Security grants to buy these devices as part of their ongoing law-enforcement efforts. Agencies want to use them to, for example, monitor the border, search for drug dealers, hunt alleged criminals and target alleged terrorists.

Records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found scores of applications from local governments for drone permits, as well as widespread patrolling of U.S. skies by military officials. We’re familiar with conspiracy theorists, who warned of “black helicopters” and a military takeover of our society. But these drones are far more advanced than helicopters -– and thousands of them might be quietly circling overhead within a few years.

The ramifications of our drone-ization

This brings to mind images of that cheesy 1987 movie, “Robocop,” in which a cyborg police officer battles thugs. These days, crime rates are at nearly historic lows, and we’re as likely to die from a meteor strike than a terrorist attack. Yet, Americans seem insufficiently concerned about the ramifications of the drone-ization of society.

Again, some uses for drones are benign -– but their widespread use by government raises serious questions.

There are some practical concerns. For instance, a Washington Post article from November found that poorly trained military contractors were making repeated blunders in operating these aircraft, leading to multiple crashes at busy airports. In other words, this video-game-like process is leading to real-world dangers.

But the biggest fear involves our freedoms. We should be able to live our lives without being constantly monitored by the authorities – unless the authorities have a specific, court-endorsed reason for the intrusion.

The Bill of Rights puts strong emphasis on due legal process and on protecting citizens from unwarranted search and seizure because those are among the cornerstones of a free society. The New York Times found that drone operators at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico practice their skills by tracking and spying on the occupants of civilian cars driving near the base, which is a small reminder that there is always the temptation for government to abuse its powers.

There are so many laws and regulations on the books that Americans are rightly worried about how closely the government should watch us.

The filibuster that created a national debate

Rand Paul’s 13-hour Senate filibuster, his way of demanding that the president detail his policy on killing Americans via drone strikes on U.S. soil, succeeded on several counts. The administration ultimately did respond.

The marathon of talking, which delayed the confirmation vote on a new CIA director, pushed the drone issue onto the national agenda. And it assembled the beginnings of a political coalition that defies typical partisan boundaries.

Left-leaning news site Politico saw Paul’s concern as part of an “increasingly hysterical strain of conservative thought.” MSNBC’s typically liberal viewers supported the “targeted killing of Americans” by 78 percent to 22 percent in an online poll.

On the right, Sen. John McCain mocked Paul, his fellow Republican senator, as “wacko.” The hawkish Wall Street Journal labeled Paul’s speech a rant and then lectured him: “The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an ‘enemy combatant’ anywhere at any time, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant.”

The Journal’s editorial writers are missing something that Paul’s supporters seem to understand: If government officials are left to determine an “enemy combatant,” they will tend to draw that distinction as broadly as possible.

Then, there is the collateral damage. “[A] new study from researchers at NYU and Stanford concludes that as many 881 civilians -– including 176 children -– have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in northern Pakistan since 2004,” said Reason magazine’s Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie. It’s naive to think that domestic uses will always be handled without problem.

Just how much do you trust your government?

The new dividing line is the same as the old one: It’s between those Americans who, in the spirit of our founders, recognize that our own government can become a serious threat to our liberties, and those who are so trusting of government that they are willing to give it nearly unlimited powers to “protect” us.

Hence, we’re seeing coalitions of Democrats and Republicans pushing limits on states’ use of drones, just as we’re seeing coalitions of Democrats and Republicans criticizing those of us fearful about the militarization of society. In California, for instance, a bipartisan bill (Assembly Bill 1327) would place some modest limits on drone use by local agencies.

That’s a welcome sign that there might be some pushback on this disturbing mix of government power and high technology. We better push back hard and fast –- before our society more closely resembles some dark, futuristic Hollywood scenario.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By Katy Grimes

If you love liberty, you were probably among the millions of Americans watching U.S. Senator Rand Paul yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and are cheering today.

Kentucky Sen. Paul dedicated 13 hours of his day to do a good, old fashioned filibuster, over one of the most important issues in America right now – whether the President of the United States can order drone strikes on the American people.

“In his filibuster Wednesday, Paul criticized the White House over its drone policies, and for refusing to rule out military strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil,” the Business Insider reported.

Paul says to allow the President to order drone strikes on American on U.S. soil is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. “When I asked the president, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding an unequivocal, ‘No,'” Paul said. “The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that,” the Business Insider reported.

Nearly as appalling were the two senior Senate Republicans who attacked Paul during his filibuster.

Big government Republicans vs. liberty loving Republicans

Senator John McCain from Arizona, who went out to dinner last night with President Obama, argued that Paul was violating Senate rules with his filibuster, as if Senate rules are more important than the rights of American citizens.

Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, also at dinner with President Obama, told Paul what he was doing is a waste of time, and maybe even harmful.

Paul’s filibuster lasted 13 hours, and was very well-spent, because nearly every media outlet in the country weighed in on it. And this issue seems to be of bipartisan interest.

Post filibuster interview

This morning, national radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh interviewed Senator Paul.

Here is some of the transcript:

RUSH: When did you decide, Senator, that you wanted to make this a filibuster? Did it just happen spontaneously or did you have a plan for it?

PAUL:  You know, I think we’ve struck a nerve, and there is a little bit of a difference within the Republican caucus and a growing sort of division on some of these issues.  Their side believes that the battlefield is everywhere.  And this is what John Brennan believes here.  He says there’s no geographic limitation to the battlefield.  And that means that if the battlefield is America also, then the people, you know, like Senator McCain and Graham, they believe that the laws of war apply.  The problem is that the laws of war don’t involve due process.  And I understand when you’re in war, you don’t get due process.  So in the battlefield you don’t ask your opponent, you know, for Miranda rights, you don’t present them with warrants.  You shoot your opponent.

RUSH:  Yet.

PAUL:  That’s a different sphere than America.  That’s why the military operates overseas and the police operate here.  We have different sets of rules.  I don’t want to believe that we’re gonna have to live in America as a battlefield because I know these young men and women.  When they go over they’re fighting for the Bill of Rights, they tell me so and I believe so, and I know that’s why we’ve sent them.  They’re fighting for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, but if we give up and say, oh, we’re gonna have the law of war, the law of war doesn’t include the Bill of Rights.

RUSH:  Senator Graham said that your filibuster has convinced him to vote to confirm Brennan.

PAUL:  Hmm.  Well, he misses the point.  This has never been about Brennan.  This is about the president and whether or not he will respond to the request I’ve made.  And the request is very simple:  Can you kill Americans not engaged in combat in America with a drone strike.  And I think the answer’s gotta be an unequivocal “no.”  Brennan may win over my objections but I’m gonna ask this question of the president. I’m gonna keep asking ’til we get an answer.  We’ve asked them this morning. We’ve talked with the White House this morning. Other Republicans are calling the White House, so I’m having assistance with other members of my caucus who want the answer, too.  I think we will get an answer.

RUSH:  Let me give you a real world example.  We have, and it’s been criticized by some, we have killed an American with a drone strike, an admitted, acknowledged terrorist.  His name was Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.  Now, let’s play hypothetical, Senator. Let’s put him in an American cafe, but everything else about him we know. We know he’s a terrorist. We know he’s acknowledged it. We know that he was involved in the USS Cole, whatever terrorist activity.  Let’s put him in Chicago and he’s at an outdoor cafe in the summer waiting to go to a Cubs game.  Is the administration asking for the right to drone him, to kill him with a drone on American soil if he’s in that circumstance?

PAUL:  You know, Senator Cruz addressed this last night, is that if he’s in America and he doesn’t have a weapon or grenade launcher on his shoulder, obviously we’d arrest him.  Senator Chambliss also made the point that that’s how we’ll get information, is by arresting people.  And, if they don’t have a weapon, why in the world would we want to kill ’em first?  We’d get no information.  Some of that argument’s been made overseas, but particularly in this country when you’re unarmed and the police can arrest you, why would we not arrest you?  So even when someone’s clearly guilty, if we can arrest ’em, it’s preferable for intelligence reasons.  If they’ve got a grenade launcher on their shoulder, any kind of lethal force can be used against them.  If they’re flying planes into our buildings, F-16s, bombs, rockets, any way we can stop people from attacking us, we use.

RUSH:  Right.  But al-Awlaki was not doing any of that when we killed him in Yemen.

PAUL:  Yeah, there’s a debate overseas how you ought to do it as well because is there a difference for American citizens than foreigners?  My argument — not everybody agrees on this.  We’re all agreed, I think, or many of us on American citizens on American soil.  Overseas, my preference with al-Awlaki would be to have a fairly expeditious trial for treason. Not one with multiple appeals. One at the highest court level and then I would do the drone strike after convicting him of treason.  There aren’t very many of these people, so this isn’t something we’re gonna go through every week.

The problem is, and this is where I really find the president’s men reprehensible, is that when Awlaki’s son is killed in a separate strike later, two weeks, we think it’s a signature strike. They won’t tell us all these things, but a signature strike is where you just knock out a caravan. You don’t know who all’s in it. You just think they’re bad people coming from a place where bad people are gathered.  And when he was killed there, the president’s man responded, and they said do you feel bad about killing the 16-year-old, are you gonna say was he a target or was he an accident, he said, “Well, he should have chosen a more responsible father.”  And so my question yesterday was, is that the standard we’re gonna take in America?  If you’re related to bad people are you allowed to be killed with a drone strike?  You know, so the standards overseas, there is maybe some question about those standards, but for goodness’ sakes, we can’t have a standard in America that if you’re related to someone who’s committed evil or someone who is bad, that you are now eligible for a drone strike.

Be sure to take a look at The 10 Best Lines From Rand Paul’s Epic Filibuster

My favorite – On the ambiguous criteria for drone targets:

“Are you going to just drop a drone hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State?”

and…

“If we believe [Obama] to be a good man who would never kill noncombatants in a cafe in Houston, sitting out in a sidewalk cafe, smoking — oh, that’s right you’re not allowed to smoke cigarettes anymore.”

By Katy Grimes

Legislators have just involved themselves in professional sports. A bill was passed in the Assembly Thursday requiring all owners of all professional stadiums and sports arenas to post signs displaying the text message number and phone number to contact arena security in order to report a violent act.

Whatever, right?

But the bill started out as something very different.

AB 2464 by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Silver Lake, originally would have required stadiums and arenas to develop and maintain a list of individuals to be excluded or ejected from all professional sports arenas if they had been involved in a “violent act” at an arena or stadium.

Before being amended, the bill stated, “the banned persons list may include any person
whose presence in a professional sports arena is determined by the courts to pose a threat to the well-being and safety of those in attendance at professional sporting events.”

How creepy–especially in this era of very subjective ideas of “violence.” Daring to question a cop in many cases can bring about an arrest.

And, the bill was far too broad in its inclusion of nearly every serious felony including a special section just on child and sexual offendser.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the bill was it would have allowed a list of the addresses of the banned persons to be published. The bill’s analysis said, “The banned
persons list would be name-based, not biometric, and therefore there would be no definitive way to identify a person on the list. This could leave the DOJ open to litigation were the wrong person may be banned from sports arenas because he or she has the same name or is similar in appearance to a banned person.

Ironically, the Assembly just passed a bill yesterday that will allow public safety professionals to keep their property addresses hidden from the public.

Both bills were sponsored by the California Police Chiefs Association, a group that is becoming more and more aggressive about increasing police authority, and lessening the rights of private citizens.

Fortunately, AB 2464 was so bad, it was dramatically amended and became just a nuisance bill for arena and stadium owners, with the signage requirement.

But, the reason I point this bill out is because I want people to see the kind of personal rights violations and liberty reducing legislation lawmakers think is a good idea. Here is the bill, in its original form, as well as the original legislative analysis pointing out the gross flaws and legal issues.

Take the time to read the bill, and please leave me your comments. I have provided the link to all versions of the bill, as well as all of the analyses.