Law enforcement misconduct has become a foul stench in God's nostrils

Once Again, the Government Sins Against the People

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

There was a headline just a few days ago on the Internet mainstream media that was all over the national news on my old rabbit-eared TV and CNN's website. The FBI, our nation's top law enforcement agency (at least up to now), has been giving false testimony about forensic samples obtained from alleged crime scenes. Fully 95% or more of all federal criminal prosecutions in the last ten years – those we know about so far – were engineered by way of apparently bogus testimony! Allow me to quote a short excerpt from this article:

FBI admits it fudged forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials for decades

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Beforeitsnews.com

WASHINGTON — “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 per cent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence. The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions. The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convicts guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated. The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the U.S. courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989. In a statement, the FBI and Justice Department vowed to continue to devote resources to address all cases and said they “are committed to ensuring that affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance. The Department and the FBI are also committed to ensuring the accuracy of future hair analysis, as well as the application of all disciplines of forensic science....”

In other words, there are thousands of criminal convictions that were falsely obtained, meaning there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the federal prison system who aren't supposed to be there in the first place. To call this outrageous would be a gross understatement, to call it a miscarriage of justice would in my view still be insufficient. The best description I can think of – and I can think of a few I can't print here – is “completely over the top”!

Wikipedia has this to say about incarceration in America: “The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate, behind Seychelles (which has a total prison population of 786 out of a population of 90,024). In 2012, there were 707 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on parole. In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population." Of that 2.26 million incarcerated individuals in state and federal prisons, that number is pretty much divided down the middle between the two. So, if there are 1.13 million people in federal prison, and 95% of them are there due to what amounts to perjured testimony, the FBI just lost every ounce of its credibility. Plus, a crime of the highest order has been committed in America due to false imprisonment and perjury – both felony offenses – and, people's civil rights have been violated because 3 out of 4 prisoners are black. The uproar over this should have been deafening, but the story came and went in 24 hours or less. Without a doubt the majority of people do not yet know about this report, which is why I am going to great lengths to bring this topic back up again.

What does the Bible say about this? Quite a lot, actually, so let me quote just a handful of verses, which should be sufficient for me to make my point. In Exodus chapter 20, verse 16 says, “You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor.” No doubt you will recognize this as being one of the ten commandments. Exodus chapter 23 says in verse one, “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.” Proverbs chapter nineteen, verse five says, “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free.” Psalm 119, verse 163 says, “I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love the law.” It says in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 25, “Therefore each one of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body”. And finally, Jesus himself said in Luke chapter 3, verse 14, “Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely – be content with your pay”. What's the 21^st century version of that truism? Don't be greedy! Sorry, Gordon Gecko and Wall St., greed is most definitely not good, not even a little. Greed is counterproductive, it is self-centered and therefore childish, and often times it can be criminal in nature.

As our planet becomes more and more populated, working for the greater good instead of one's personal needs and desires will become the preferable way of life. Fewer resources for more people seems to be the order of the day. As such, hoarding money, food, investments such as houses, or other commodities like gold and silver, is becoming the old way of doing things. People are finally starting to figure out that we can either coexist together peacefully, or we can annihilate each other in war. Which do we choose? As for me, since I worship the Prince of Peace, I choose to live in His peace, and harmoniously with those around me to the best of my ability. But when people are falsely imprisoned, that's where I draw the line. When people are railroaded into prison after being nearly defenseless in court based on false testimony, that is where I draw the line. When people's civil rights are being viciously violated up one side and down the other, that is where I draw the line! This grotesque miscarriage of justice has just over a million people falsely imprisoned, and that's the federal system alone. The other 50 states are undoubtedly just as bad, if not worse.

What can we do about this? There can be no question that law enforcement and the criminal court system are utterly corrupt, all one has to do is watch the news on TV or the Web. The latest death of yet another unarmed black man in Baltimore, Maryland is the most current example as I write this. It seems this poor guy suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody. Naturally, nobody in the department knows anything about it, not one little bit. Evidently the police in Baltimore expect us to believe this gentleman broke his back accidentally. How ridiculous!! This was a case of cold-hearted murder, pure and simple. If a civilian did this to another, at the minimum they would be charged with second degree murder, or at least manslaughter, depending on the jury. But if it's the police, they will almost always get off scott free. Why? Because the cops lie on the witness stand to convict people just like the FBI agents I wrote about at the beginning of this posting. And, as you have read, God hates false testimony and He hates liars.

Is it any wonder that more and more people are becoming afraid of the police? When I'm out in public and see a cop, I refuse to even so much as make eye contact with them. You see, a long time ago, back in the early '90's, I found myself convicted of a weapons charge over an altercation in traffic. Another driver was repeatedly cutting into my lane and slamming on his brakes right in front of me. After the altercation, I left the scene, nor do I make an apology for that because I regarded it as justifiable self-defense, and I still do. A year and a half later, when the case came up in court (I had posted bond and gotten out of jail), I found out that the man who started the whole thing was an off-duty cop. He was driving in his civilian car wearing civilian clothes, and I had no idea this guy was a police officer. The bottom line was that I was convicted of 2 felonies because the off-duty cop who started the whole thing got up on the witness stand and told one lie on top of another (naturally, this time he was in uniform). My only consolation was that I got probation and a fine instead of jail time. So I know what it's like to be falsely convicted of a crime. And that's exactly why I side with the protesters, and I always will. And I am convinced that this police and courtroom misconduct will eventually deteriorate into massive civil unrest, which is something I've been predicting in my books for years. The summer of 2015 could get very interesting. Only time will tell.