Peter Hitchens (the lesser of the two Hitchens brothers, but still better than 90% of his peers) writes a conclusion to this article:
There is no longer any point in pretending that they have not failed. And when institutions fail, the best thing to do is to replace them from top to bottom. That would be a truly special measure.
Most of what he writes is specific to the Britfuzz, of course, but certainly his sentiment and exasperation must also apply to… oh, let’s just start with the FBI, who were once a proud and effective crime-fighting organization, but who have allowed themselves over the past four or five decades to become so politicized as to be pretty much the secret police for the political elite.
Was I the only one who started oiling the rope when the Justice Department (don’t get me started on them) ordered the Fibbies to investigate and treat concerned parents as domestic terrorists?
Who pursue high-profile “wrongdoers” (step forward, Martha Stewart) but let real scumbags (Jeffrey Epstein, the Clintons, etc.) just skate away scot-free?
Or when that slimy little lizard James Comey, who after “investigating” Hillary Clinton’s private email account — which as a point of fact was completely illegal, given her position as SecState — declared to Congress that his conclusion was that her actions were not worthy of prosecution.
And I’m pretty sure that most thinking people in this country have their own example of egregious behavior (or rather misbehavior) on the part of the FBI, which alone should make a companion of Hitchens’s suggestion of complete abolition thereof a realistic, and reasonable demand.
Seriously: how much worse off would we be without them than we are now?
Kim says: “the FBI, who were once a proud and effective crime-fighting organization”. I think the many years under J. Edgar Hoover would make one question that statement. I think Hoover set the precedent for extra constitutional investigations, blackmail and extortion. The TV show with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. portrayed a gallant FBI, but that was fiction, as it turns out. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was reading your comments. The blog site shows an timing out error message, yet successfully publishes it. Maybe they have slow readers who check these comments?
Fuck me, if some Fibbie is actually reading all this stuff, then you KNOW they’re overstaffed and underworked.
I’ve been getting that error for a couple weeks, don’t know what the fix is. It says it’s a host error.
It started appearing right after the blog was transferred to a new host – out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it would seem.
Yup. The Church Commission of the mid-1970s documented wholesale abuses by the FBI…and they haven’t improved their behavior since then. It’s why I support the 4D Solution. Disarm, Disestablish, Disperse, and Dismiss.
Wrong Hitch.
Either the gin and tonics have started to flow too early, or not soon enough.
Written last night. No gin at all.
Duly corrected, thankee. [/1984]
Not sure about the “once proud” thing. Seems to me the FBI has always been corrupt, grabbing, arrogant, and a bunch of other unsavory things. Remember, their headquarters is named after a man who is practically the very definition of a corrupt official. And, Hoover didn’t exactly found the bureau, but he pretty much made it what it is today — and has been for all of my 68 years.
The same holds true for our federal police agencies on this side of the pond. The FBI may have accomplished some good things but generally speaking the DOJ is rotten to the core. Hillary Benghazi Clinton belongs in jail for crimes that date to her mishandling of FBI files on political opponents when Bill Lover Boy Clinton was in office as well as the handling of the White House Travel Office, whitewater, cattle futures, her use of a non secure computer for classified materials, her involvement with scandals regarding the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State, Haitian disaster relief, countless people around her dying under mysterious circumstances and the list goes on and on.
The DOJ is politicized. They have little interest in justice as understood by rational people. Most of the government is filled with corrupt bureaucrats. Washington could use an enema.
JQ
Your recollection of Shrillary’s history could be written in a Grand Jury Indictment (and should). She is an embarrassment to the Republic, as is the FBI.
Hitchens is right. Police in the US need reform too but not in the direction of defunding as demanded by the tongue wagging leftists demand. Many communities want more police in their area to protect their neighborhoods, not less. There is a massive wave of retirements coming up in one nearby blue state of State Police taking with them their institutional knowledge. This can truly harm an organization when such mass exodus occurs with their people. Who wants to be a policeman today with everyone second guessing your judgement on a regular basis? The incessant cries of racism whenever dealing with someone of a different race is enough to just send any rational person to the sidelines.
We need real policing with policemen walking a beat, getting to know the local citizens. Furthermore, we need to stop being soft on petty crime. Give an inch and the criminals will take a mile. A light tap on the wrist for vandalism teaches the miscreant that society is soft on crime so they escalate to stealing cars, burglarizing homes, committing home invasions, drug abuse etc. Significant crimes such as murder, using a firearm to commit a crime, rape, sexual assault result in minimal sentencing and early release for “good behavior.” Good behavior in jail is ridiculous. the criminal is there for behaving badly in society. Let some more of them rot there.
JQ
We need to completely overhaul the Mental Health-care System to get these threats out of society, and into institutions where they, and we, can be safe, and they can be dealt with.
We have too many of our institutions being led and/or severely influenced by “bleeding hearts”, and the destruction of the social fabric is the result.
It is my assessment that the left-wing loonies would be appalled at what would actually happen if the police were completely defunded. I believe that small communities and neighborhoods would organize the equivalent of “neighborhood watch groups” that would patrol their own little turf. This would be the equivalent of a vigilance committee, and since there would no longer be police to haul off the thugs, murderers, rapists, burglars, car thieves, etc. ad nauseum, to transport them to the local lockup, the lesser of these criminals would be beaten and possibly crippled for life, permanently marked for future identification and warned never to come back, and then dumped in front of the nearest ER.
The bigger fish would not be so fortunate. Either the bodies would be dumped back on the criminal’s home turf, dumped in front of the local morgue, or simply disappear.
I would regard this as a terrible thing, because suddenly most crimes would be punished by the citizenry at a scale often out of proportion, and many things that are not statutorily worthy of a death sentence would suddenly become so.
What most of the liberal shit-heads fail to remember is that the police do not exist to prevent crime, or even to protect the honest citizens. They are there to ensure that justice is served to the criminals rather than vengeance being meted out by a mob.
Kim, with regard to your last question, the answer is that over time it wouldn’t be any worse.
What I would envision springing up would be little fiefdoms run by gangs/mafia who would establish their own turf and boundaries. Then they’d extract protection money from the people within their area. They’d probably give their enforcers special insignia, clothing or badges to let people know who they are.
Heck, you’d probably have to pay protection just to drive a car on their streets. How would they know who’s paid and who hasn’t? Hmm, they could do something like sell you a little sticker, renewable every year, to put on your vehicle so that it’s obvious to their enforcers that you’ve paid the fee.
Sound familiar?
In a lot of large cities the cops are simply another gang, better armed, more uniformly dressed, and with governmental approval.
It’s likely that the FBI was a competent agency for criminal investigations once – in it’s first year as the Bureau Of Investigation (BOI) under President Taft. But Woodrow Wilson wanted politicized law enforcement, and got it. Then Warren G. Harding, distracted by other crises, appointed J. Edgar Hoover as director and it went (further) downhill from there.
Originally, the BOI was only an investigative agency. It’s personnel were forbidden to carry guns on duty and were expected to have other law enforcement agencies do the arrests (local and state, or federal marshals and the Secret Service if necessary). Hoover changed that, and the FBI became increasingly violent, especially during the 1930’s after Prohibition ended. E.g., John Dillinger (or some man) was ambushed and shot to pieces with Thompson submachine guns until his own mother couldn’t have identified the body. This was actually a period of exceptionally low crime; to keep their budgets, Hoover and other police agencies disguised the overall low crime rates by ramping up the publicity about a handful of violent robbers.
During WWII, the FBI had the fairly easy job of catching enemy spies and saboteurs – easy because the Nazis and Italian Fascists generally made it easy, while the Japanese Empire apparently managed to recruit just _one_ undercover spy from all of the Japanese Americans and did not even try to identify disaffected Americans of other nationalities. The rest of the Japanese spying ended automatically without any investigation needed. Every Japanese embassy and consulate included “official spies” with diplomatic passports; they collected a lot of data on our pre-war capabilities and gave the Pearl Harbor attack fleet information on air patrol patterns and where the battleships were parked, but their passports gave us a list to expel once the US was actually at war. Their “backup” plan was a network of German business travelers, which could have worked if only the Japanese were considered enemies.