They are following orders of the Goon in chief.
Know what the difference is between your average prison guard, and a prisoner?
Different uniforms.
Actually, they’re probably not LEO in the sense that they don’t have the authority to detain/arrest citizens who aren’t incarcerated. So yeah, kind of goons who are only there to bust heads.
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the Justice Department’s agency responsible for prisoners, later confirmed that the officers were their employees.
“BOP, like other federal, state, and local [law enforcement officers] may be deputized under the authority granted the [United States Marshals Service] to enforce federal criminal statues and protect federal property and personnel,” it said in a statement to NBC.*
A fair point. Whether they’re legally authorized to be there may be a separate question; but it might be unreasonable to expect them to figure that out, at the probable cost of their jobs. And I don’t know what the chain of command is; maybe showing up, at least, was a legal order. – Do prison guards get a speech about disobeying illegal orders? If they’re BOP, they’re federal employees; but they’re not military employees, are they? – they’re under the Department of Justice, apparently. Which doesn’t really answer what outside of prisons they’re allowed to do.
I think their uniforms don’t usually carry identifying information. Whether they should be doing so, even in the prisons, is a good question; but they may not have made a deliberate decision to hide the info out of embarrassment.
Or maybe some of them are embarrassed. I hope so.
I can’t help but feel that they are used to cracking people over the head, and that they are not embarrassed about it at all, in fact, eager to join in a fray.
If I got so far in my protesting that I found myself face to face with one of these brownshirt scumbags I would keep going.
I see nothing identifying them as police. Are they undercover?
Man, you sure are smart. You know more about arguments I haven’t made than I do! I don’t know if “just following orders” applies only when you say it does, but I’ll assume not.
They can walk away, they just aren’t willing to do so.
No, I’ll blame the poor wage slaves too. Is it my turn now? Do I get to tell you who to blame and who to not?
Hmmm, prisons… prisons… there seems to be a particular problem at prisons just now… something about large crowds of people forced to breathe one another’s air… what was it called, again?
Really, I can’t imagine what their purpose might be in attending the protest events.
So this point
in post 24 above does nothing for your understanding of why they are where they are? I don’t recall specifically seeing where they were stationed or what they were to protect.
How do you arrive at this conclusion?
Through having read some history.
SA: Volunteers. Ex Military. All devoted followers of Hitler. Politcal.
BOP guards: working for a living. Some few may be veterans. Belong to both parties about 50/50. Non-politcal.
Look, I dont like the fact that Barr pulled this crap- of bringing these dudes from their normal day to day nasty jobs of being prison guards and sending them out to guard DC. That isnt their job. Barr should be censured for that.
But those are just normal working guys, doing their jobs, feeding their family, paying the rent. It aint their fault Barr ordered them to do this.
So no wonder the cops get a “Us vs Them” mentality, where these working dudes have been called (just on this page):" secret police or President’s mercenary force, proud boy goons , and brownshirt scumbags."
So far as i know, they havent done much but stand around and look menacing.
And should they have ‘disobeyed a illegal order’? Well, I will tell you this- before you try “disobeying a illegal order” you had better be SURE that order is illegal- and from what I have read, various political pundits & legal eagles have argued and differed over this, and no one has said their simple presencs is anything like a “crime against humanity”.
Mind you- I am very suspicious of *Barr’s motives *for ordering them there.
They aren’t German either, so I guess that’s another point against me. I don’t care about what their day jobs are, whether they may or may not be veterans (hardly a selling point), or who they have to feed. If there is no uniform or rank or insignia I have no reason to think these people have any sort of authority and I wouldn’t give them any. They are Trump’s - and therefore the Republican party’s - own goons.
No, they are not. They are not Goons, and they are not trumps.
I heard in the military you can be prosecuted for enforcing an unlawful order given by a commanding officer. Is that true, and does the same apply to prison guards? if Trump loses and he orders his prison guards to block entry to the white house, will the guards be prosecuted for that the same way (I hope) soldiers would be prosecuted for following an unlawful order?
Also does the president have more power and control over prison guards than soldiers? I’m assuming there are lots of regulations limiting the power of the executive branch in how it uses the military, but are prison guards from the federal bureau of prisons a group the executive branch has much more control over? If so, then what about law enforcement from the federal government? Can Trump order FBI and ATF agents to block and surround the white house if he loses re-election and prevent the next president from entering? And again, do those groups have any rules about how they are required to ignore unlawful orders and how they will be prosecuted for enforcing unlawful orders?
I feel like this is all a big dry run for Trump refusing to leave office either in 2021 or 2025.
I grew up in a prison town made famous by Johnny Cash. Things may have changed since the 70’s but of the dozens of guards I knew (parents of friends or high school classmates), most barely finished high school or had equivalency diplomas, were heavy drinkers, and predominately conservative hicks (so by extension voted Republican by default but didn’t care one whit about the party or the candidates or the policies).
It scares the ever living daylights out of me if your average prison guard is trying to manage a demonstration. Now, admittedly, the ones in DC are the elite unit called in to quell prison riots. That said, they shouldn’t be deputized to be doing crowd control. Kinda like having a podiatrist do open heart surgery.
There is a reason why prison staff do not wear identifying marks, it is part of prison security.
I will not go into why exactly that is the case, but only rank insignia and staff number badges will be seen, and since these staff usually operate in enclosed spaces there is no need for them to have these identifying labels on outdoor clothing.
In the UK prison staff would never be used in this way despite being very well trained in control and restraint because they are way too busy doing their day jobs - I am surprised that US prison system has enough staff to be able to detail them off for other work like this - it would surely have to be under social emergency measures.
The other thing to mention is that UK prison staff do have powers to arrest and detain, but they are not trained fully in application in the way that police are - they are versed in powers of arrest in relation to their work where it might come into contact with the public which is generally under very specific circumstances.
I would expect a lot of similarities with the US corrections staff, along with some important differences.
I should also add, I would have expected them to be carrying a lot of video recording gear - it is mandatory to record all events in the circumstances where there might be conflict and use of force - so you would likely get better coverage of their actions than you would with regular LEOs.