How Rose parade policing subverted the Constitution “in the spirit of homeland security”
In response to the Dec. 31st article ‘Rose Parade attendees surrender 4th Amendment rights in bizzare police squad program’, herin lies the analysis of a review of Pasadena, CA Police Department’s ‘Parade Watch’ program.
The original review, which documents and endorses the methods used in initially establishing the Pasadena Police Department’s Rose Parade Watch program in 2001, is posted on the website of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, which describes its’ mission as ‘to advance the concept and practice of problem-oriented policing in open and democratic societies’. [Note: Please see DemocracyIsNotFreedom.com to learn what the founders thought about 'democracy'].
In the document, dated April 30, 2002, Pasadena Police Chief Bernard K. Melekian, under the letterhead of Police Executive Research Forum, accepts the department’s nomination for the “Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing”. [See past winners of the award here. Wikipedia notes that Herman Goldstein's essay Improving Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach is included in
Crime & Delinquency (April 1979).]
The Pasadena program is then reviewed in a summary entitled ’PARADE WATCH – Deterring Terrorism at the Rose Parade’.
Despite the public’s fear and clamor for security less than three months after the attacks of 9/11/01, the Pasadena Police Department’s own admissions concede that random warrantless searches of vehicles on the parade route, which they sought to justfiy, would not hold up to legal or constitutional scrutiny.
What followed was a desperately contrived and ultimately successful attempt to get the people to willingly surrender their privacy and fourth amendment protections.
Page 5 of the pdf report mentions “Legal constraints – Police event planners researched legal sourcebooks and consulted attorneys about the legal basis on which police might search recreational vehicles in view of an unspecified terrorist threat. Absent probable cause, police needed to rely on RV owners’ consent to search their vehicles.”
Page 11 of the report deferred to the official government version of the “The Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building” and refers to “News reports” regarding the degree of damage that a single vehicle bomb can purportedly incur, but does not mention dozens of actual news reports from Oklahoma City proving that multiple bombs were found planted inside the Oklahoma building that day. Brigadier General Benton K. Partin, a military explosives expert who spent 31 years in the U.S. Air Force, debunks the official government version of Oklahoma City, in Alex Jones blockbuster film 9/11:Road to Tyranny. Oklahoma Police Sergeant Terrance Yeakey, an award winning officer who was the first on scene at Oklahoma City, warned his ex-wife “it’s not what they are saying it was” and was later found murdered in a gruesome crime scene that was attributed by ‘officials’ as ’suicide’.
The Parade Watch report admits that police “conferred with advisors from the U.S. Marine Corps, California National Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies”, and that if a terrorist attack were to occur at the parade route, that “the local ice rink may be large enough to serve as a temporary morgue”.
Expanding on the police attempts to justify searches, the report states “Regarding legal prohibitions, Event Planning Section officials consulted the Pasadena City Attorney, a District Attorney, and private attorneys to determine how the Police Department could lawfully search recreational vehicles that parked in proximity to the parade route. Federal and state search and seizure law clearly prohibited searches of motor homes without probable cause. The possibility, or even the likelihood of a terrorist
using a vehicle containing explosives, absent specificity, did not constitute probable cause to search.
Legal restrictions notwithstanding, an informal Departmental policy posed a significant barrier to searching recreational vehicles……Conducting what could appear to be arbitrary searches of recreational vehicles, for whatever reason, would certainly diminish the public’s enjoyment and affection for the venerable Rose Parade.”
Despite this prohibition limiting searches, the report goes on to acknowledge the arrogant police end-run around the 4th Amendment: “In December police staff decided that recreational vehicles parked along the parade route would be subject to search.” [article continues here
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