Wednesday, January 25, 2012

LAPD joining in “multi-agency tactical exercises” in Los Angeles

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

I find it quite interesting that I live in Los Angeles, yet I have heard nothing about this.  Obviously this is not headline news, as these urban military/police exercises usually occur under the radar to some degree.

Thankfully an astute reader e-mailed me about this exercise and upon further research I found out that it is indeed occurring and most worrisome is that all the drills are completely closed to the public.

Furthermore, there is a suspicious lack of coverage in the media, especially in the establishment media, and when it is covered they highlight that it won’t interfere with our daily routines, completely ignoring the larger factors at play here.

That’s right, they’re using our tax dollars to conduct drills with inevitably impact us, yet we’re not even allowed to observe what they’re doing.

According to Daily Breeze, part of the massive MediaNews Group (MNG) and the LA.com network, joint military training exercises are going to be held in the evening in downtown Los Angeles and “other portions of the greater Los Angeles area” through Thursday of this week.

They cite the Los Angeles Police Department without giving a precise name of a source, and they do not say when exactly the drills will begin, although the article was posted in the morning of January 24.

However, upon visiting the Los Angeles Police Department website, I realized that they had actually released a news item about it on January 23, which says, “Multi-agency tactical exercises are to be conducted during evening hours around the downtown area January 22-26, 2012.”


I find it quite interesting that news reports are only covering it two days after it began and the news release from the LAPD itself came a day after they began.
 
The fact that they are not giving exact locations and giving the wildly ambiguous location of “portions of the greater Los Angeles area,” which is massive as most people know, is somewhat troubling for me.

Given that I am paying for these exercises, the least I would like to know is where exactly they are being conducted.

I do not think it is unreasonable for the public to observe such drills, since at the end of the day we are footing the bill.

The most specific information they have provided as to the location of these exercises was given when the unnamed LAPD official said the sites “have been carefully selected to ensure the event does not negatively impact the citizens of Los Angeles and their daily routine.”

According to the police, this training will include helicopters, and has been coordinated with the local authorities along with the owners of the training sites themselves.

Police stated that safety precautions have been taken to help “prevent risk to the general public and military personnel involved.”

Daily Breeze writes, “The exercises are designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements, police said.”

As Death by 1000 Papercuts aptly points out, this is not just an isolated, innocuous joint military-police exercise, in reality this is part of a larger trend of joint exercises between the military, police and homeland security which is further blurring the lines between law enforcement and the military.

Of course there is the fact that police have been militarized by the Department of Defense in order to create a kind of de facto martial law through programs like the Pentagon’s 1033 program, but these drills are a much more naked incarnation of this trend.

The police claim that because “safety precautions have been taken to prevent risk to the general public and the military personnel involved,” the training is not open to the public.

However, I see no reason why it would be unsafe for the public or media to view such an exercise, especially from a safe distance. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that such drills are a blatant example of the American police state and when captured on film look less than flattering.

I have been repeatedly contacting the LAPD about this and I have yet to get an answer.

Every person I’ve spoken to said that they had no idea what I’m talking about, and then eventually either transferred me to someone who gave me the same response, or in many cases I just got hung up on.

In fact, when I was able to get someone on the phone that actually seemed to know what I was talking about, after being transferred around a few times, they hung up on me.

Then when I was successfully connected by the person who previously hung up on me to an “interior line,” the number for which she could not give me since she claimed it was not a public line, they transferred me to the Van Nuys Police Department which expressed no knowledge of the exercise or even any involvement in it.

After a great deal of time and many calls, I was able to obtain the number for the LAPD Media Relations Department: (213) 486-5910, although they were not picking up the phones at the time of writing.

If anyone is able to speak with them and get information about what agencies are involved along with what military unit(s) I would greatly appreciate you passing on the information to admin@EndtheLie.com in order to present a more complete article on this subject. 

This article first apppeared at EndtheLie.com