Efforts to nationalize state and local police forces across America go back decades, but the Obama administration has accelerated that push and is now openly working to turn your local cops into extensions of federal power. In addition to being unconstitutional, this is an absolutely terrible idea for a number of reasons.

First, let’s talk about Obama’s scheming on this front. Before openly complaining about the militarization of police, Obama was militarizing American police departments at an unprecedented rate. At the same time he was attacking the rights of Americans with slogans like “weapons of war don’t belong on our streets,” he was flooding our streets with actual weapons of war — tanks, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and more to local police.

After the unrest in Ferguson, much of which was fueled by Obama ally and financier George Soros and his billions according to an in-depth investigation by the Washington Times, Obama started complaining about the very militarization his administration was engaged in. Using an executive order, Obama then created what he called the “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” to “study” the issue. What do you think his task force said? Surprise! We need to nationalize the police.

Of course, they didn’t use the word nationalize or federalize, probably because Americans would have quite properly recoiled in horror. Instead, his committee claimed we need federal “standards” for police. During the Ferguson fiasco, UN boss Ban Ki Moon even demanded that the city police obey what he termed “international standards.”

Just like administration’s nationalizing of education with Common Core was imposed by federal bribes to our states, the taskforce proposed bribing our local police departments with “grants” if they would submit to Obama’s national standards. Critics ridiculed the plan to create ObamaCops as “Common Core for police,” but this is no joking matter.

In March of 2015, the Obama administration announced that it had chosen six “pilot cities” to test out some of the nationalization scheming. The radical plan was dubbed the “National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice.” In a nut shell, it is using U.S. taxpayer dollars to deploy so-called “experts” and “researchers” charged with training officers to act in a manner that the Obama administration deems just — in essence doing the bidding of the Obama administration. Officially, the Justice Department is helping local officials to “fight crime,” too.

The first cities being targeted are Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Stockton, California. But they’re not planning to stop there, you can be sure of that.

In May, Obama approved another one of his taskforce’s recommendations, and pretended to “ban” handouts of military gear from the feds to our local police. This was blatant deception though. What he really did was say that local and state police will only get certain military equipment if they agree to federal policing standards.

The riots in Baltimore only poured fuel on the fire, with Obama’s close allies like race-monger Al Sharpton demanding that the Justice Department just nationalize all police.

But nationalizing the police is a terrible idea — and history shows it is extraordinarily dangerous. First of all, if local communities are having trouble keeping their police departments in line, which is what Obama is arguing, how is transferring that control to D.C., which more than two thirds of Americans in polls say is out of control and a threat to liberty, going to remedy that? It won’t — it will only make real and imagined problems much worse.

Beyond that, though, is the danger of centralizing power. When you think of national police forces, what do you think of? If you’re like most people, the Soviet KGB, the National Socialist SS, or the East German Stasi probably come to mind. If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, what do you think will happen when D.C. has absolute power over your local police department? Nothing good, that’s for sure.

If we want to maintain our freedoms, we need to support our local police and keep them independent. The alternative — so-called ObamaCops patrolling our streets following dictates from D.C. — will almost certainly lead to disaster.

Get involved in your local area, and make sure your state and local government do not accept bribes from the Obama administration to surrender your community’s ability to govern itself and run its own police department.

Alex Newman