One Of My Criminal Justice Assignments

Introduction To Criminal Justice DB Assignment 3

Counter-Terrorism coming into the Law Enforcement field is quite literally a scarey thing if you ask me. This is essentially the Law Enforcement community having trained and being capable of detecting a "terrorist" on American soil. We've been reading every single day about how the President and the N.S.A., or National Security Agency have been getting into trouble for wiretapping. The Federal Courts are arguing against the wiretapping and stating it is illegal according to the U.S. Constitution. Some people see this as a violation of their privacy, a violation of "Civil Rights" bestowed upon us through the demonstrations of men like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcom X or even John F Kennedy being in the White House in attempting to give the American people Civil Rights against the oppression of the government against the little man, John Q Public.

In Law Enforcement now we have little to no rights to "Free Speech" anymore. You might be labeled an "Enemy Combatant" if you say or do the wrong things, based on as little as hearsay...that's right I said hearsay. So, if Martin Luther King Jr were alive today and to sponsor a "Million Man March" on Washington D.C. about the violation of Civil Rights from the changing laws through the War On Terror, do you think he would inspire people to follow him? I think that's a definite yes there. He would also be deemed an "enemy combatant" eventually. I seem to remember a certain thing called "Freedom of Speech", don't you? Whatever happened to that? But there might be terrorists living among us the Federal Government says to the people. To a point, yes they are correct, there might be another Osama bin Laden hiding in America in some college dormatory or apartment complex planning and scheming the next 9/11 disaster. How do we know this though? Are people being wiretapped illegally? Are their rights being violated? I just don't know.

This is one of those unconventional Law Enforcement duties that I am defining in this assignment. To wiretap our phone, computers, and e-mails to do Law Enforcement work in order to catch terrorists is what our nations Police Officers are learning, doing, and monitoring right this very minute through the Homeland Security Agency and it's many tiered umbrella of Law Enforcement agencies. Are you a "terrorist" or an "enemy combatant"? I know I'm not. I also know that the PATRIOT ACT is something that the illustrious President of our nation has used to circumvent the Freedom of Speech our Founding Fathers fought, struggled for, and finally won with the War For Independance against a Tyranical King George of England.

Wasn't hearsay not allowed to be used in criminal court of law in the last 200 some years? But since September 11, 2001, the criminal laws have been changed so that if you are deemed an "enemy combatant" by hearsay, you can literally be taken away based on as little as hearsay, which to me is speculative rumors. Is this right that Law Enforcement can do this? Well, I can't really comment on that, now can I? I'll be labeled an "Enemy Combatant" won't I? Even speaking in theory and conjecture might be mis-construed as treasonous and seditionist actions, if I'm not careful.

Law Enforcement has taken on a new role. The role is simple. To catch terrorists, to detain them, or capture them throughout our nation through the use of video, audio, computer, and now gossip surveillance. The Police Department's can and will catch the criminals and terrorists using surveillance of multiple kinds in order to save their lives and fully investigate who might or might not be a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant."

The trouble I see with this is, there's nothing to stop them from making a mistake. What if someone just doesn't like a Police Officer because of a difference of opinion about something so small as a religious difference. The Police Officer pulls over a citizen who has a cross dangling from their rear-view mirror and the Police Officer sees this as offensive and asks the citizen to take it down or makes some comment to the citizen that the citizen does not agree with and the citizen expresses their opinion in a non-hostile way to the Police Officer but the Police Officer is having a bad day and takes it wrong. Guess what, that Police Officer can deem you an "enemy combatant" if you fit their profile of a non-compliant individual by using the NCIC computers and by their discretion as a Police Officer and the laws that protect them in their duty of protecting our nation.

Let's look at the definition from my text book from page 737 of a "terrorist action" and maybe it will make better sense.

Terrorist Activity : As used in this chapter, the term "terrorist activity" means any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed (or which, if committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the laws of the United States or any state) and which involves any of the following :

(1)The hijacking of a plane or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).

(2)The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.

I'll stop right there, because I could type this out forever and read the legalized version of everything I stated prior to the "terrorist activity" I just typed out there. That was all typed from the Criminal Justice Today text book. By using a vague and indiscriminantly non-singular definition the laws become extremely hard to define as a citizen, thereby giving more power to the Police Officer, the Judge, the Court Systems, and ultimately the President of the United States of America.

Are you a "terrorist" or an "enemy combatant"? I know I'm not. I'm only theorizing about it in a class assignment. Guess I better not be doing any of those things by those definitions or I may be taken away. Oh yeah...and when you are deemed a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant", according to the newspaper stories I've kept current on, your lawyer will be not allowed to talk to you for weeks, months, if ever. On top of this, once you have been deemed that so nasty word of "terrorist" or "enemy combatant" by a governmental agency, like Homeland Security or even a simple Police Officer, there's not a thing you can do. If you're taken away to a place like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba you are staying for a very long time until you are proven a terrorist or not, then after that you were still deemed one of those individuals and your citizenship can be or probably was stripped away from you.

Schmalleger, Frank Criminal Justice Today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson : Prentice/Hall

Retrieved September 11, 2001 to Present, from Florida Today Web site: www.floridatoday.com...



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[edit on 13-12-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

Are you a "terrorist" or an "enemy combatant"? I know I'm not. I'm only theorizing about it in a class assignment. Guess I better not be doing any of those things by those definitions or I may be taken away. Oh yeah...and when you are deemed a "terrorist" or "enemy combatant", according to the newspaper stories I've kept current on, your lawyer will be not allowed to talk to you for weeks, months, if ever. On top of this, once you have been deemed that so nasty word of "terrorist" or "enemy combatant" by a governmental agency, like Homeland Security or even a simple Police Officer, there's not a thing you can do. If you're taken away to a place like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba you are staying for a very long time until you are proven a terrorist or not, then after that you were still deemed one of those individuals and your citizenship can be or probably was stripped away from you.

I don't think that you have to do anything wrong to be considered a terrorist. I have been done wrong by the government and I could never get anything done about it. They are protecting a known drug dealer. They tried for about three years to foreclose on me on a loan that I paid off, paid off early and overpaid. And to top it off, they would not even let my lawyer prove that I had repaid the loan. After three years of going through this, I finally got one person to listen to me and he found that I had repaid the loan. After losing about everything that I had and the ability to repay another loan that I had with them aand make a living, they tell me now that they are going to help me by "allowing me to repay the other loan".

I had the man investigated by the Office of Inspector General, but they claimed they could not find any evidence of wrong doing on his part. You bet they can't, because he has went through my file and removed all the paperwork that would prove he was wrong. I know this for a fact because I held a paper in my hand that was an internal letter where another employee told him that he had mistreated me. When I finally got permission to make a copy of my file, that letter was missing. He also put in my file that I was "uncooperative and aggitated toward him". I'll bet that they have me marked as a possiable terrorist. My lawyers finally told me that what they did to me was wrong and obvious, but they were the government and they could do anything they wanted to me and there was nothing that I could do about it.

At one time, I thought that all those anti-government people that live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere that you see ever once in a while when the FBI goes in to arrest them were just a bunch of nuts. Now I think that they may just be people that have been treated like me.

You've got a really good point there. Who's designated as a terrorist is picked by your actions or words. The hilarious thing, is that all of those actons they describe as "terrrorist actions" are exactly what the government is doing to us right this very second.

Using terror as a weapon and suppressing people from free movement within their country with fear of being arrested or detained or incarcerated as a "terrorist suspect", an "enemy combatant" or any other word they choose to use in the future.

Tell Me what you think of this Criminal Justice Assignment I wrote, please.

I'm curious of people's opinions.

I'm wanting people's opinions posted so I know how this sounds. I know there are people out there who are reading this but few are commenting to it.

[edit on 15-12-2006 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

All of the laws in the last 5 years have essentially been putting the U.S.Constitution through a paper shredder. The US PATRIOT ACT says anyone who says anything contrary to anything about the War on Terror is suspect and liable to face prison time.

Isn't this saying, if you disagree with the U.S.Government, you are a terrorist? It's saying, you're not allowed an opinion? It's saying, we're right, and you will forever be wrong?