Pipeline Company Paid Pennsylvania Police Department to “Deter Protests”

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition May 22-24, 2015

ACLU Calls Arrangement “Flat Out Unconstitutional”

Pipeline Company Paid Pennsylvania Police Department to “Deter Protests”

by ADAM FEDERMAN


Between June and October 2013, Kinder Morgan, the largest energy infrastructure company in North America, paid a local Pennsylvania police department more than $50,000 to patrol a controversial pipeline upgrade. The company requested that the officers, though officially off-duty, be in uniform and marked cars. Kinder Morgan’s aim, according to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, was to use law enforcement to “deter protests” in order to avoid “costly delays.”

Kinder Morgan sought off-duty police officers to “deter protests” and avoid delay of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline upgrade.

It’s unclear if the police department instructed its officers to explicitly “deter protests” but, if officers carried out Kinder Morgan’s request, their conduct would clearly violate the First Amendment rights of protesters.

“It is politically and socially entirely inappropriate for a private company to be able to hire a police department and use its officers to try to intimidate protesters of one stripe or another,” says David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia and a Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/22/pipeline-company-paid-pennsylvania-police-department-to-deter-protests/

[LiberalFighter]

1. It should be illegal for police officers to be in uniform when they working off-duty.

[enough]

2. Yes, and the idea that the authority of the police force is available for hire,

in or out of uniform, is extremely disturbing.

[enough]

3. Judi Lynn, I'm going to post this in the Pennsylvania group.

These pipeline issues are very hot in many parts of our state, and the constitutional issues are big. Thanks for posting this.

[FoxNewsSucks]

4. I think this may be more common than we know,

I lived in Wichita KS for way too many years. Off-duty uniformed police and sheriff's deputies roamed the 2 malls, and stood at the doors of the Dillons and other grocery stores.

They were hired as "private security". Not paid through the city or county, but they had to get paid their overtime rate. Obviously, the advantage to the retailers was the deterrent factor and the fact that unlike actual private security, they could arrest on the spot and radio for backup.

The Highway Patrol was also hired, "off-duty", under the same conditions to sit in road construction zones and write tickets.

Corporations don't even have to hire their own security any more, they just take over the public's for their own benefit.

[malthaussen]

5. Many police are for sale in the same way...

It is quite a common practice, Judi. There was a DU post during Occupy about the NYPD hiring out officers in uniform to protect private property, and splitting the fees. Can't find it now, alas. The practice is supposedly not permitted, but...

-- Mal