Either unwittingly or perhaps with complete complicity St. Bernard Parish, La. Is considering what amounts to fascist take over of the Sheriff’s department.  If you simply read the story and don’t think about it much it will seem like it’s all OK and not a bad idea.  However it is not OK.  The question is not, “What’s wrong with this picture?”  The question is, “What’s right about this?”  The answer is nothing!  It does nothing more than set a precedent and condition Americans to accept things that in the end will destroy what is left of our liberty. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11800942/

ST. BERNARD PARISH, La. - Maj. Pete Tufaro scanned the fenced lot packed with hundreds of stark white trailers soon to be inhabited by Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Shaking his head, he predicted the cramped quarters would ignite fights, hide criminals and become an incubator for crime, posing another test for his cash-strapped sheriff's department, which furloughed 206 of its 390 officers after the storm.

Tufaro thinks the parish has the solution: DynCorp International LLC, the Texas company that provided personal security to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and is one of the largest security contractors in Iraq. If the Federal Emergency Management Agency approves the sheriff's department's proposal, which would cost $70 million over three years, up to 100 DynCorp employees would be deputized to be make arrests, carry weapons, and dress in the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Department khaki and black uniforms.

But while the plan is for the DynCorp employees to eat and live with the other deputies in the same trailer camp, the hired guns would earn "significantly more" than the $18,000 annual salary of an entry-level deputy and the $30,000-a-year salary of a seasoned officer.

à Read the entire article through the link above.

Not only that but the company involved in this particular bit of fascist behavior has a history of human rights abuses in their ranks.  Dyncorp claims that their trafficking in women and children into white slavery were the actions of a few employees but that is hard to believe when you consider the number of slaves they abducted.  In the end does it really matter?

Feel free to Google for Dyncorp slave trade or Dyncorp sex slave or anything along those lines and you’ll find plenty of information on the topic.

Here’s a very nice little article that describes the problem:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,529136,00.html

British firm accused in UN 'sex scandal'

International police in Bosnia face prostitution claims

Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes
Sunday July 29, 2001
The Observer

A former United Nations police officer is suing a British security firm over claims that it covered up the involvement of her fellow officers in sex crimes and prostitution rackets in the Balkans.

Kathryn Bolkovac, an American policewoman, was hired by DynCorp Aerospace in Aldershot for a UN post aimed at cracking down on sexual abuse and forced prostitution in Bosnia.

She claims she was 'appalled' to find that many of her fellow officers were involved. She was fired by the British company after amassing evidence that UN police were taking part in the trafficking of young women from eastern Europe as sex slaves.

She said: 'When I started collecting evidence from the victims of sex trafficking it was clear that a number of UN officers were involved from several countries, including quite a few from Britain. I was shocked, appalled and disgusted. They were supposed to be over there to help, but they were committing crimes themselves. When I told the supervisors they didn't want to know.'

DynCorp sacked her, claiming she had falsified time sheets, a charge she denies. Last month she filed her case at Southampton employment tribunal alleging wrongful dismissal and sexual discrimination against DynCorp, the British subsidiary of the US company DynCorp Inc.

DynCorp has the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force in Bosnia which was created to help restore law and order after the civil war.

Bolkovac has also filed a case against DynCorp under Britain's new Public Interest Disclosure Act designed to protect whistleblowers.

As well as reporting that her fellow officers regularly went to brothels, she also investigated allegations that an American police officer hired by DynCorp had bought a woman for $1,000.

Bolkovac's British lawyers say her evidence will highlight how the underground sex trade in Bosnia is thriving among the 21,000 Nato peacekeepers and thousands of international bureaucrats and aid workers.

Many of the hundreds of women working in Bosnia's sex industry are lured from countries such as Romania and Ukraine with promises of jobs as waitresses but then delivered to brothel owners who confiscate their passports. Bolkovac claims that Dyncorp officers forged documents for trafficked women, aided their illegal transport through border checkpoints into Bosnia and tipped off sex club owners about raids.

In an email to more than 50 people - including Jacques Klein, the UN Secretary-General's special representative in Bosnia - Bolkovac described the plight of trafficked women and noted that UN police, Nato troops and international humanitarian employees were regular customers. It was shortly after this email went out that Bolkovac was reassigned.

Richard Monk, a former senior British policeman who ran the UN police operation in Bosnia until 1999, has sympathy with her plight. He said: 'There were truly dreadful things going on by UN police officers from a number of countries. I found it incredible that I had to set up an internal affairs department to investigate complaints that officers were having sex with minors and prostitutes. The British officers were on the whole extremely good and very professional, setting a great example. But there were policeman from other countries who should not have been in uniform.'

A DynCorp spokeswoman would not comment on the Bolkovac case because it was coming to court later this year. But in a earlier statement the company said: 'The notion that a company such as DynCorp would turn a blind eye to illegal behaviour by our employees is incomprehensible...We encourage our employees to be proactive in reporting inappropriate behaviour and commend those who follow our procedures by reporting it.'

Bolkovac's case is the second against DynCorp alleging misbehaviour in Bosnia. Air mechanic Ben Johnston is suing the company, alleging he was sacked because he had uncovered evidence that Dyncorp employees were involved in 'sexual slavery' and selling arms.

Since 1998 eight Dyncorp employees have been sent back from Bosnia, but none have been prosecuted.

There is plenty of information out there if you take the time to go look it up, either way it happened, it involved their employees, so even if you accept that it was the actions of individuals vs. the company, who cares?  Obviously they can’t manage to hire and control people of integrity.  Even if most of their employees are good people, which in my personal opinion is a big if; do you want ANY private mercenaries patrolling your streets with a badge and a gun?  After all look how they’ve dealt with the “whistle blowers,” they got the same punishment the sicko perverts did… Fired.

But the biggest and most egregious issue is in the fact that the Sheriff’s Department  furloughed 206 of its 390 officers after the storm I presume because they could not afford them as it mentions cash strapped earlier in the article.  So now FEMA (Who is part and parcel of Homeland Security) is here to save the day.  Rather than fund the Sheriff’s department to hire back its deputies or hire new deputies they will pay a lot more to hire DynCorp?  It doesn’t get more fascist than that.

Dyncorp seems to be blessed in the eyes of the US Government.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,935689,00.html

Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts

Antony Barnett
Sunday April 13, 2003
The Observer

A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal.

DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department.

The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring.

An Observer reporter who contacted the firm's US headquarters purporting to be a potential police recruit for Iraq was told it was hoping to 'get people on the ground in two to four weeks'. The recruiter told the reporter he could expect a salary of $80,000plus 'hazard bonuses'. He was offered a contract of between three months and a year and told he did not need to be able to speak Arabic. He had to be a US citizen who had served as a police officer in America, and when the reporter said he had worked in Texas for a number of years he was told he sounded 'ideal'.

Despite DynCorp's demands for US citizens only, it is offering the private contracts through its British office in Aldershot.

Former Labour Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle said last night: 'I find it difficult to believe that, at a time when bringing law and order to Iraq needs to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity, a private American firm like DynCorp is entrusted with this job.'

DynCorp's advert, posted on a US website and headed 'Iraq mission', stated that it was acting on behalf of the US Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. It was seeking 'individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq'.

The company is looking for active duty or recently retired policemen and prison guards and 'experienced judicial experts'.

While the US has promised help in bringing law and order to Iraq, the involvement of DynCorp has caused concern as it has been involved in a series of recent high-profile scandals involving personnel in sensitive missions overseas.

DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women.

When Dyncorp employee Kathy Bolkovac blew the whistle on the sex ring she was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehaviour, according to the ruling of a British employment tribunal in November.

DynCorp has also been heavily criticised over its involvement in Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton, that involves spraying vast quantities of herbicides over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop.

A group of Ecuadorean peasants have filed a class action against the company alleging that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children. The company denies the charges.

DynCorp, which has its headquarters in Reston, Virginia, employs almost 25,000 staff, many of them former US military personnel. The Observer was unable to reach DynCorp for comment.

There really is nothing right about this deal.  It violates the rights of the officers who used to have jobs in the Parish.  It violates the fundamental basis of our rights as citizens.  There really is nothing to call this but pure and simple fascist behavior.

I encourage people to share news of this.  Contact any law enforcement officers you know and how them get in contact with their local Police Association or combined associations such as CLEAT.  People should contact their Senators and Representatives.  I’d be willing to bet that if this goes through, DynCorp will not be out in three years. 

In the end the Sheriff is elected and now his deputies are to be hired from private mercenary companies?  It’s time to wake up.  Otherwise you’ll be enslaved in your sleep.  For those of you in law enforcement put this in the context of your own job.  If Dallas were hit by a Katrina and the Department laid-off over 50% of it's officers and replaced them with contract mercenaries and double the pay how would you feel?

The issue really is that there is nothing good or right about this.