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Bush's Patriot Act: local gangbangers are “domestic terrorists” (?)

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  • Bush's Patriot Act: local gangbangers are “domestic terrorists” (?)

    Miami Commissioner Hardemon [and U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer]: Prosecute gangsters as terrorists

    The Miama Herald
    By David Smiley AND Charles Rabin
    01/16/2015 8:06 PM


    Excerpt:

    For years, the federal government has used the Patriot Act as a tool to pursue and charge dangerous terrorists. But what if agents used the power afforded by the controversial anti-terror legislation in another way — to target local criminals who terrorize their own communities one bullet at a time?

    That’s apparently an option on the table in Miami, where a wave of gun violence that engulfed inner city communities in 2014 has now spilled over into the new year. This week, Miami Commissioner Keon Hardemon and U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer discussed declaring local gangbangers “domestic terrorists” and investigating and prosecuting them as such, according to the commissioner.

    “This is in the realm of what I call creative prosecuting,” said Hardemon, a former public defender who believes the Patriot Act would enable law enforcement to better investigate violent criminals and heap harsher penalties on perpetrators. Ferrer “admitted to me that he’d never thought of using the Patriot Act in the way I presented. But I liken the type of terror we have [in Miami] to when someone shoots up a parade.”

    ...

    Whether his proposal will stick or even prove useful is unclear. The Patriot Act has been used — many would say abused — to investigate and target U.S. citizens who don’t appear to meet the definition of a terrorist. The anti-terror legislation has been cited, for instance, to authorize secretive “sneak-and-peek” warrants for drug-related cases. But the U.S. attorney’s office already uses the RICO and Hobbs acts to pursue charges against organized crime rings and violent gangs.

    Just a few months ago, federal authorities charged the Big Money Team gang with terrorizing Little Havana and Allapattah through armed robberies, assaults and carjackings. They packaged charges through a seldom-used federal law, “violent crime in aid of racketeering.”

    Still, Hardemon said Ferrer was receptive to embracing the Patriot Act. Ferrer declined through a spokeswoman to speak to the Miami Herald.

    Michelle Richardson, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said it’s unlikely using the Patriot Act would provide investigators any power to go after gangsters beyond what they are already afforded. She said if anything, deeming local gangsters domestic terrorists might simply widen the already vast net of who can be investigated and chip away further at civil rights.

    Last year, for instance, it was disclosed that the federal government used a legal interpretation of the Patriot Act to collect phone-call records in bulk. “Once you get into declaring purely criminal everyday activity terrorism you start a slippery slope,” she said.


    ...


    Read more at:

    http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...le7057871.html

  • #2
    MSN News also picked up the Miami Herald story and I believe that a comment left by Walter A Bradford best (reasonably accurate) sums up what is happening:

    Here we are- In 2001 when the Patriot Act was in the planning stages, the ACLU and many judicial researchers and so-called experts warned that in a future time they were concerned that the Patriot Act would be turned against Americans and used to prosecute anyone for anything. They argued that the act was so poorly written, so broad in interpretation that anyone could be considered a terrorist. And here we are, 2015 and we have a prosecutor talking about "Creative Prosecution".. Over 500 people alone in the United States have been vindicated in 2014 for crimes they were convicted of and had been imprisoned for decades, some even sitting on Death Row for murders they did not commit. I do not know for sure how much money had to be paid to each of these people as recompense for their illegal imprisonment but I cannot imagine how many BILLIONS of dollars will be paid in future decades to people wrongfully convicted, imprisoned or even executed by misapplying the "Patriot Act" to domestic, crime, violent or otherwise. Using the "Patriot Act" to punish gang violence will then lead to punishing small time bunko mobsters, then to child abusers, then to arsonists and to small time burglars until the federal case load will be so heavy, so misapplied that we will have more logistical expenses on our hands serving these charges and convictions than it would be worth. I don't like the sound of this for what it means now and portends for the future. When we had hundreds of true terrorists in Gitmo and they were forced to be repatriated to their terrorist homelands and now actively fight us and reprisal and retaliation doubled by their long term sweep incarceration, how many small time thugs will do the same. This guy is probably a right wing nut drive that is planning to run for another political office under the title of "America's Toughest Prosecutor". Sound familiar Sheriff Joe Arpaio? If tougher sentences were the answer to violent crime, why is Orlando, Florida's violent Crime rate UP and petty crime down?


    Comment was posted by Walter A Bradford (Jan. 17, 2015) at the following article:

    Miami Commissioner Hardemon: Prosecute gangsters as terrorists
    MSN News
    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/...id=mailsignout

    Comment


    • #3
      " There Ain ' t no Justice ".

      Comment

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