The Rise of Federal Police Power: Feeding the Anti-Authoritarians
By Robert Folsom | January 27, 2012
The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) may be the world’s most boring topic. That I even mention it here by name runs the risk that you’ll stop reading and start clicking to another page.
But please do read on: The word “dull” does not apply to what you’re about to read. To wit, the otherwise boring CFR is behind the massive upsurge in U.S. Federal police forces in recent years — including more than 25,000 Federal cops who DO NOT work for Treasury, Justice, Defense or Homeland Security (the traditional crime-fighting departments).
Instead, they’re employed by such agencies as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (yes, NOAA is the weather service), whose assault-rifle wielding agents participated in the 2008 take-down of a Miami lady for dealing in… sea coral. The Wall Street Journal reported that the coral dealer was busted “for failing to complete paperwork for an otherwise legal transaction.” Following her dramatic arrest, she was fined $500 and placed on probation for a year.
The question of how the weather service ended up with police powers and armed agents is where the CFR comes in. Its purpose is to interpret and apply statutory law as enacted by Congress; the relevant agencies write the interpretive language and enforcement provisions that comprise the CFR.
Which is to say: The regulators themselves decide how they will interpret and apply the law. As for how applying the law with police power was granted to agencies like NOAA, the short version begins with the attacks on September 11, 2001. In turn, “when the FBI’s attention shifted to terrorism matters, Congress gave permanent [police] powers to inspectors general in more than two dozen agencies.”
And when you have police powers, you start hiring police.
The size of the CFR — and the number of Federal cops — began to multiply. In 1970 the CFR was 54,000 pages; today that number is 165,000, and the printed volumes require “27 feet of shelf space.”
Some 90 agencies now send personnel to a law enforcement training facility run by Homeland Security. According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2010 “there were 12,606 prosecutions from cases investigated chiefly by agencies other than Justice, Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security. That was a 50% increase from 15 years ago.”
Federal cops and/or criminal investigators today work for the Peace Corps, the Government Printing Office, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
A series of WSJ articles in December gave detailed examples of absurd enforcement activities against citizens who had no clue that they were committing a crime. For example, a 2005 raid of the Custer Battlefield Museum in Montana was carried out by two dozen Federal cops from various agencies who were “armed and brandishing automatic weapons,” for the crime of selling historical items under false pretenses. Agents returned in 2008 and alleged that the museum’s owner “was in illegal possession of eagle feathers.” In both cases the charges were later dropped.
The growth of Federal police powers is an unmistakable example of negative social mood driving the trend toward increasing authoritarianism. The WSJ’s reporting was good journalism, but lacked this all-important larger context.
Alan’s Hall’s essay in the April 2010 Socionomist fills that gap:
Mention authoritarianism and most people imagine its ultimate incarnation — a dictator wielding top-down control. The socionomic perspective, however, paints a fuller picture. Authoritarianism begins with a negative social mood trend, which in turn spawns a desire among some to submit to authority and among others to coerce their fellows to submit.
Yet within this trend there is indeed a flip side:
At the same time, still others, caught up in the same emotional climate, battle against authoritarianism.
You can read Alan Hall’s entire, two-part essay on this developing conflict, for free. Follow this link to learn more.
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5 Comments
Anyone who thinks that we have any protection from the Constitution can buy the bridges and swampland that I have for sale.
I won’t take issue with the thesis of this article, but you have at least chosen a poor example to illustrate your point, and presented it quite inaccurately.
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is not just the National Weather Service, but also includes the National Marine Fisheries Service (now called NOAA Fisheries). I’m sure that the case of the sea coral dealer involved the enforcement branch of the Fisheries Service, not the Weather Service. I don’t believe that the Weather Service has any “enforcement” capability, since it is not a regulatory agency.
The current federal fisheries management system was created by Congress in 1976. Since that time, there has been an ever-increasing volume of fishing regulations (which appear in the CFR) and the Fisheries Service is charged with enforcing these regulations…. This is not an obscure, inaccessible, or authoritarian process.
Contrary to your assertion, the Fisheries Service’s enforcement responsibilities and capabilities pre-date the 2001 terrorist attacks by many years. And it so happens that the proliferation of federal fishing regulations and related enforcement actions increased throughout the bull market (positive social mood) years of the 1980s and 1990s.
Thanks for your comment. I realize that the enforcement responsibilites of gov’t agences pre-date 9/11, but my emphasis was on the trend as reported by the Wall Street Journal — that only recently has enforcement among smaller agencies been carried out by significant numbers of armed agents, who have no reason to expect violence or resistance from citizens.
Robert Folsom
Thanks for your comment. I realize that the enforcement responsibilites of gov’t agences pre-date 9/11, but my emphasis was on the trend as reported by the Wall Street Journal — that only recently has enforcement among smaller agencies been carried out by significant numbers of armed agents, who have no reason to expect violence or resistance from citizens.
Perhaps it may indicate a negative social mood, but I see this as nothing more than government agencies wanting to get bigger on the taxpayer’s dime. I understand that TSA now want to expand screening beyond airports to bus and train stations. Government has only gotten bigger since the American Revolution. I have not seen or read about one government organization that downsized voluntarily. The U.S. Post Office is bankrupt and obsolete, yet it still hangs around begging for more money from Washington D.C. I am waiting for the new-improved Post Office. Governments and government agencies only downsize involuntarily by total national bankruptcy, losing a war, or violent revolution. In Greece the foreign creditors are demanding pay-cuts and a reduction in the government workforce. What is the Greeks’ response-massive riots and burning down cities. Are the Greeks rioting for more government or less government? Is more government or less government positive or negative? Some people have positive moods about Stalin. Some people have negative moods about Roosevelt. I dislike the terms positive and negative moods. For example, I get a phone call and the operator said I have just won the Nigerian lottery but first I must send some one $10,000 in Zimbabwe. Is it negative to tell the operator to go pound sand or is it smart to tell the operator to go pound sand? This is why I don’t like positive, negative, optimistic, pessimistic. I prefer realistic.