9. Those semi-universal background checks can be examined by law enforcement agents any time, without probable cause, without a warrant.
8. Red-light traffic cameras turn out (as Libertarians predicted) to be all about raising revenue, and not so much about traffic safety (which seems to be exactly what Secretary of Safety and Homeland Security Louis Schiliro ordered).
7. The Wilmington Police Department has an incredibly high usage of tazers to subdue suspects (a fact that is only reported about when somebody dies after being tazed and the WPD spokesman says there is no story here, move along folks).
6. Our police departments don't run their DUI checkpoints according to their own policies, and get away with it until a good attorney (not a good newspaper) calls them out for it. [Now what they will do is rewrite the policies, because--guess what?--nobody else has to approve them!]
5. The New Castle County Police Department snapped images of over 164,000 license plates in 2011-2012 and placed them in a database to be maintained for a year, even if the people/cars associated with them weren't doing anything wrong.
4. Of course, that makes the NCCPD look good, compared to the Delaware State Police, which hid how many ALPRs [Automated License Plate Readers] it has from an ACLU FOIA request, maintains those records of innocent drivers for FIVE years, and has sharing agreements with almost every Federal agency except Voice of America (and they are working on that one).
3. With crime and gun violence spiraling out of control in Wilmington, the Department of Safety and Homeland Security purchased and outfitted a "Maritime Unit" instead of tackling crime in the city.
2. Beau Biden's Chief of Staff has now floated new potential restrictions on Concealed Carry Permits, not because there is any evidence that the weapons are misused by those who have such permits, but because too many citizens are asking for them.
1. Delaware's "fusion center"--the Delaware Information Analysis Center [DIAC] at 1575 McKee Road in Dover--does not have a separate, accountable budget line, civilian oversight of its operations, or direct accountability to ANYONE outside the self-made (OK, corporate-made) millionaire Secretary of Safety and Homeland Security Louis Schiliro, who claims to need a bigger budget to keep us "safe," even though his own budget has doubled over the past five years, and by his own admission the greatest terrorist threat to Delaware is ... snow storms and the occasional hurricane.
And a BONUS: DIAC created and marketed a "See Something, Say Something" mobile phone app that effectively takes over control of your phone and turns it into a walking GPS locator for the Delaware State Police. So while you thought you were helping the cops watch the bad guys, you were actually helping the cops watch YOU.
We hear a lot about "connecting the dots," well here's an exercise for you: in the second-smallest state in the nation we have at least 56 separate organizations with law enforcement powers. We also have five times as many police officers per capita as California.
Isn't it time--especially with a retired State Trooper as Speaker of the House of Representatives--to be asking ourselves exactly who is in control here?
This is no longer an issue for partisan politics, or at least it shouldn't be. Yet neither Democrats nor Republicans seem interested in any effort to rein in our out-of-control surveillance/police state.
By the way, while you're on the subject, in 2011, 2,551 Delaware citizens lost their right to own firearms (forever!) because they were busted for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Just thought I'd throw that one in there for those of you haven't quite figure out the the POLICE LOBBY in Delaware prefers our citizens to be UNDER SURVEILLANCE and UNARMED.
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A police state within a police state wrapped in apathy.