the u.s. police force has gotten leaner and meaner in some major cities police departments now have a force that looks more like a military unit we'll look at this trend ahead. and there's been a massive jailbreak at iraq's abu ghraib prison allowing the escapees of an al qaeda members the attack comes nearly a decade after infamous photos of abuse at the prison were released more details coming up. and the house is considering amendments today to the defense spending bill one lawmaker is pushing that the the dea to defund the n.s.a. surveillance program we'll have an update from capitol hill later in the show. hello there it's tuesday july twenty third four pm in washington d.c.

i'm marinated and you're watching our t.v. . now since the one nine hundred sixty s. local law enforcement agencies across the u.s. have blurred the lines between police officers and soldiers so much so that american police forces have adopted a mindset previously reserved only for the battlefield now more recently the department the department of homeland security has doled out grants for local police departments they give them tanks rockets and more military grade weapons so is this a measure towards a safer society or does this mentally pit police against the civilians they're sworn to protect now here in studio to discuss is the man who coined the term warrior cop and the author of the new book the rise of the warrior crop top radley balko hire out the idea that there's nothing here now the acronym swat that stands for special what weapons and tactics and the country first saw swat teams in the late one nine hundred sixty s. in los angeles but today there's thousands of swat teams around the country why do

you think so many municipalities implemented swat teams with a lot of reasons for one the federal government is sort of encouraged this with the drug grants that go to these police departments so if you send your swat team out to arrest a murderer rapist there's no federal money tied to that be send them out after a drug offender your revenue comes into your your department but also the the federal government isn't giving away a military equipment surplus military equipment from the pentagon to police departments across the country and for the last thirty years literally millions of pieces of equipment you know we're talking bayonets tanks helicopters machine guns have been transferred to domestic police agencies across the country which they then used to start swat teams now this leads to the next question do these swat teams do they threaten american civil liberties. i think there's an appropriate use for swat teams and that's when you have an emergency situation hostages or a bank robbery or an active shooter and you're using violence to defuse an already violent situation the problem is that the overwhelming majority of these raids

today are to serve warrants on people who are suspected of. nonviolent consensual drug crimes so here you are using by you're creating violence where there was none before and that i think is really the problem and i think that you know that this happened one hundred to one hundred fifty times a day in this country and that's you know that is not a trend that i think most of us would associate with every society right now you've written that community policing where you know there's an officer walking the beat swinging the baton and that is a better way of policing minister polities why's that oh well police officers need to have a stake in the communities that they serve they need to be part of the community of the community needs to consider them a part of the community and so you know when police or the. police is reactionary policing is reactionary when you know cops are only getting out of their squad cars when there is something wrong when there are only interactions with the public or negative when you have these frequent swat raids where communities feel like they're sort of being occupied by some sort of you know outside force. that strange relations between police and the community so cops are out walking beats if they

know the names of the principals of the schools on their beats they tend neighborhood meetings then they're considered part of the community and then when they do have to use force the community looks at it as one of their own protecting them and stead of this sort of. wealth already figure from the outside coming in to impose force upon them right now why you mention before the police departments are using tanks why does the police department need a tank well they don't you know they use them because they get them for free and you know when you have something you want to use it but yeah there's no appropriate use in a domestic environment for a tank i mean some of these tanks shoot fifty caliber ammunition which you know even the military has restrictions on when you use those kinds of bullets you know to go through ten city blocks no matter what sitting in the way and the fact that the pentagon is giving this equipment that was designed for use and more policing arms to be used on american streets in america neighborhoods i think is something that should be should trouble us so who is benefiting from the militarization of police departments well i mean for

a long time it was mostly just the police departments themselves they were getting this equipment but after september. we start to see the department of homeland security giving grants to police departments to buy more of this stuff and at least with the pentagon giveaways this was stuff that already existed these d.h. s. grants are buying new equipment and so we've seen companies now spring up to make this equipment to sell these to these police departments of for these grants these companies then they're going to use some of that money to open offices in d.c. to make sure the program continues or expands and so now we have a police industrial complex sort of a little brother of the military industrial complex and that that's going to be very difficult to roll back well that actually is a excellent segue for me this actually yesterday morning ray kelly the police commissioner of the new york city police department or he does not bad for the wall street journal and he wrote quote as a city we have to face the reality that new york's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime to ignore that fact as our critics would have us do would be to form it would give it would be

a form of discrimination in itself now. kelly who is being considered for the next head of the department of homeland security what would a d.h.s.s. look like under ray kelly if he feels this way yeah i mean it's hard to say because you know the the the policies that you used to oversee a large urban police department are going to be very different than the policies are going to be implemented nationwide for basically anti terror purposes you know we did overseas and programs that would be similar there would be similar programs at the h s a lot of spying on muslim groups in new york city and that's that's very very troubling i mean i think his nomination is troubling because he is clearly a sort of authoritarian and that bothers me i don't think we're going to have you know a nationwide stop and frisk policy i think it's it's more just sort of indicative of his of his mindset and i think it's a troubling development that he's being considered for the position now i read that

a number of other federal agencies like this. what is that fish and wildlife service like nasa the department of the interior and even the department of education they have swat teams what does the department of education need with scotty well though claim that they you know they investigate fraud fraud to the student loan program in that some of these people are dangerous and therefore they have to you know have a tactical team to serve warrants on these people you know the problem is though it used to be when a federal agency needed that kind of force they would borrow a swat team from you know the f.b.i. or another federal agency. and you know whether or not you think that that kind of force appropriate to serve those sorts of warrants you know the problem is when every federal agency has its own swat team they're more inclined to use it more often if you have to borrow from another agency you have to jump through some hoops the other agencies can ask you to justify it when you have your own sort of ready at your beck and call you're going to be more likely to use it for you know increasingly sort of petty crimes and i mean that's the thing really i mean the

swat teams used to be used only as a last resort in these emergency type situations and what we're seeing increasingly today is a to being used you know first or second or very you know very early on in this is in process and it's just it's not an appropriate use of force but the threat that is being used against now final question since the department of homeland security's creation it's handed out thirty five billion dollars in grants that's a lot of grants and do you see this slowing down any time in the near future. no probably not i mean nobody you know the police departments love to get these grants the politicians who represent those districts love to celebrate the fact that they help the department get those grants and you know as i said now you've got these private corporations that exist solely to fulfill these grants with with the gear and they have a very strong interest in lobbying to make sure it continues so i think we are unfortunately nearing a point of no return that was radley balko the author of rise of the warrior cop.

now a new report from the washington lawyers committee for civil rights in urban affairs shows a huge racial gap in who gets arrested especially for nonviolent crimes in the nation's capital r t correspondent liz wahl takes a closer look at these findings and hit the streets of d.c. to get a reaction from citizens in the ward seven and eight. by taking good bye bye right by setting up a civil rights protest sparked from coast to coast startling statistics come out in the nation's capital a report by the washington lawyers committee for civil rights shows huge racial disparities in arrests in the district this is a shocking set of statistics that really everybody needs to pay much more attention to the report is based on government data between two thousand and nine and two thousand and eleven it shows more than eight out of ten arrests were of african americans most of them were nonviolent nine out of ten of those arrested for drug

offenses were black and seven out of ten traffic arrests were african-american the study comes as the verdict in the george zimmerman trayvon martin case has put a renewed spotlight on racial profiling it might be worse here only because of the historical size of the african-american population but no i don't think it's unusual i think that unfortunately it's a commonplace and it's that's the reason it's among the most significant civil rights from going our country and predominantly black neighborhoods in washington d.c. many residents feel like police officers do in fact target black people people of maque color will rest in another person of another skin color just common knowledge a windows like like you would get arrest for everything you could be standing somewhere and come and pressure out you know it so you don't move and you're not doing that with so many more black people getting arrested the numbers have many asking what's behind the racial disparity in arrests civil rights lawyers point out that when it comes to drugs black and white people do them just as often black

people are usually the ones that get arrested the survey data on the drugs actually show that the rest of the usage rates are pretty similar in the last month you said last year are pretty similar cross races so that really raises the question why are ninety percent of these arrests. taking place in the african-american community after the report was released d.c. police chief cathy lanier issued a statement that says quote we have not yet had a chance to thoroughly review the report data but the washington lawyers committee has looked at an important issue and drawn some thoughtful preliminary conclusions the criminal justice system and academia have long examined the complex relationship between arrest rates and certain variables such as race poverty education and or employment the report was done with the help of five d.c. judges who have seen the lasting effects of getting arrested would have to report

to the employer a background check whatever it is that they have had contact adverse contact with criminal justice system and offered the opportunity to explain. away the situation never developed civil rights attorneys say the effects go far beyond the initial arrests those of criminal backgrounds have a hard time buying a home getting a job and getting their lives back on track and these situations put people at greater risk of crime and poverty so the consequences of getting arrested can last a lifetime and washington lives wall r.t. . elsewhere in baghdad on monday iraqi security forces locked down areas around the infamous abu ghraib prison and another high security detention facility on the outskirts of the city as well they did this to hunt for hundreds of escaped inmates including some of our kiddos top militants after daring insurgents assault after a daring insurgent assault set hundreds of detainees free now ok to has since

claimed responsibility for the job break and the carefully orchestrated late night attacks killed dozens on sunday night including at least twenty five members of the iraqi security forces and insurgents fire dozen of more dozens of mortar shells and detonated suicide and car bombs during iraqi forces into firefights. lasted more than an hour now the two prisons attacked housed thousands of inmates including convicted al qaeda militants and exactly one year ago al qaeda in iraq arms stated a case started a campaign called breaking the walls and that made france in prison members a top priority here to discuss further is saeed erekat a correspondent with al kurds and a former u.n. spokesperson for iraq thank you for being here thank you now let's start off how could a jailbreak of this scope actually happen is a classical operation it was it was begun of course using suicide by bombs in cars you know so that that is a classic. tactic they also had like you suggested mortars and they had

militants attacked from different areas they cut off the road so it was will planned it is probably been weeks and months in the making they have done it time and time again in the very well organized group of militants of al qaeda they represent the. qaeda in iraq they slammed state in iraq and the levant so it was well coordinated with funded will arm and if it proves anything it proves that they're making a resurgence and iraq now what kind of reaction are we seeing from people on the ground who just kind of went through this escape an experience they escape not went through but experience the escape of more than five hundred prisoners well it is a nightmare for the iraqi security forces no doubt about it because when i was in iraq and as we discussed earlier i was in iraq for five years between two thousand and five and two thousand and ten and these brave brave they happen time and time

again now the security forces it's also divided along sectarian lines it is not very well disciplined despite the best u.s. effort to really you know train it and equip it and so on and have it do itself in a professional way so it is it is a nightmare they claim that they caught. some but i suspect that the main overwhelming majority are on the loose and that means that they can we organize and attack government facilities over and over again now this prisoner saw its fall some of the worst violence the country has seen since two thousand and seven and you mentioned this earlier but what does this say about the stability of the country and how it relates to al qaeda as resurgence well i think it has a direct tie or related directly to what is happening in syria because they are on flow and the idea the logical inclination of both and the like. and in iraq they work very closely together on the floor on the syria also found its way into iraq so all these elements you know work together they militants have

always been there when we have seen the. ability to with or be consulted self and have a national dialogue and national reconciliation has really fragmented the country and so on we had problems in the north with the kurds we have problems in the south but the shia and iran's influence and the bar which is mainly sunni so you have the sectarian divide is getting wider and wider and it is a transportation along that now can you explain how grave has been years since its infamous time as a u.s. prison and what basically says operation iraqi freedom and who is currently operating the facility well iraq is security forces not operating at you know the americans handed over to the iraqis of course we all remember the famous or the infamous pictures of people being tortured and so on or led to believe that they were being tortured and so on to avoid psychological impact but it has always been

the tories you know abu ghraib has always been the tories there was a place for torture under saddam it was a place for torture of during the american occupation for a brief period and it continued to be the same way after the americans pulled out right now the us we've spent billions of dollars. in iraq and the country has seen some of the worst violence in its history in the wake of the war but it's not the only country where the u.s. has spent a significant amount of money while still hellen eighty million eight in a majority of the population which is what it's done in iraq what can you expand on this a little bit of first of all the u.s. government focused on the military aspect of its occupation and not really on the civilian preparation and training and all these things there was something called the p.r.t. which is project reconstruction teams reconstruction teams failed miserably to spend billions of dollars and they would start something and never finish it like schools. farms factories electricity now look at iraq today it is still like

three or four hours of electricity the water is a basic services are scarce the health industry is really collapsed and so on so instead of focusing on these aspects of reconstructing iraq they focused on creating a strong security force and a strong military which remain divided along sectarian lines thank you very much there was a. correspondent with our kids. now back here in the nation's capital the house will vote on the latest amendments to the defense spending bill including the a marsh amendment which calls calls to defund the national security agency's domestic surveillance program along with another amendment which bars the n.s.a. from collecting information on americans unless they're actively under investigation now political correspondent sam sachs is live from capitol hill with all the latest where you don't sound. you hear me.

so what's the latest on the efforts in congress to do something about the n.s.a. . right so as you mentioned congress is working through about one hundred amendments to the defense spending bill and the very last amendment the one hundred to members that's going to be considered is from congressman justin amash from michigan and his administration amendment is pretty simple it's basically to defund the n.s.a.'s program that uses section two fifteen of the patriot act to collect massive amounts of data on american citizens and section two fifteen it's that section that allows the n.s.a. to go to third party businesses like horizon to collect records we've since learned from edward snowden's leaks that that's been interpreted to mean we can and that the n.s.a. can collect records on virtually all americans in the pfizer court is also rubber stamp that now while this is going on while this vote is going to take place on a congressman amash his amendment the n.s.a.'s chief keith alexander is also coming up to the hill to lobby members of congress in the house intelligence committee to

vote against that is to say that defunding the n.s.a. is section two fifteen surveillance program as is unwise so you kind of see this battle taking place right here on the hill already now sam just how much support is there for the amendment and if it passes what happened. well interesting story here is it wasn't believe that this amendment would even get a chance for a vote on the floor but really the leadership in the house the republican leadership was forced into it congressman amash had people by his side who promised that they would vote down the rule to even consider the bill if this amendment isn't allowed on the floor so there is some support from it he also this bill has co-sponsors this man excuse me has co-sponsors from the progressive caucus like congressman john conyers and congressman jared polis but it still has a long way to go if you think about it you're looking at the far left wings of congress in the far right wings of congress joining together to do something about the about the n.s.a.

here while the whole middle in the establishment really doesn't want to have anything to do with this and you also. so the senate intelligence chairs senator dianne feinstein and mike rogers come out and say that this is unwise we can't be defending the funding this n.s.a. program that's that's helped save lives so really has a long way to go to the past but it's really important because this is the first time that members of congress are going to be put on record on what they think about about the n.s.a. spying program that's been revealed from edward snowden's leaks now is it fair to say that none of this would be possible without the leaks. yeah i think so i mean clearly this this provision wouldn't really have any contacts without the leaks or would even have a chance to limit the surveillance powers of the n.s.a. without anyone knowing that this stuff was going on but we've seen a lot of other action on the hill since these leaks came out in the senate the chairman of the judiciary committee patrick leahy is moving a bill that he says he has sixty votes for that's going to change the electronic

communications privacy act to prevent law enforcement agencies from confiscating people's e-mails and electronic communications past one hundred eighty days these are reforms that privacy groups have been pushing for for quite a while that haven't gotten any traction but are now finally getting some traction now that people are aware of just how broad a lot of this surveillance is. that was political commentator sam sachs thank you sam. now former enforcement chief of the security and exchange commission robert khuzami just accepted a job offer with d.c. corporate law firm kirkland and ellis fighting off other recruitment attempts from firms like visa and bridgewater now the kirkland ellis job will pay khuzami more than five million dollars a year and in accepting the offer he's following the quintessential washington script about being an influential government insider becoming a paid advocate for the industry he once policed now predicts say that this revolving door common at the f.c.c. undermines the agency's independence and link links that an extra in extra could

lead to wall street who saw me spent seventeen years in the government and has publicly called for lawyers to build public and private experience saying that defense work is essential to the justice system but as a partner at kirkland cruz amin will represent some of the same corporations that the f.c.c. oversees now kirkland is known for lavishing its star partners with some of the highest salaries in the industry and it's also been reported that they hired one of his obviously tenants at the f.c.c. kenneth lunch now some companies offer khuzami even more money which just shows how highly into man these former s.e.c. enforcers are to these financial firms and as wall street faces greater regulation after a financial crisis the firms are clamoring for marquee names who can navigate the agency. now in other news millions of pieces of trash are floating in the world's oceans and fundamentally changing the make up of the earth's food chain in fact tons of plastic it has accumulated in what is known as the great pacific garbage patch that was discovered in one thousand nine hundred seven by captain charles

moore and he described it as an actually a soupy mixture of micro plastic fragments that swirl into vast belts in the remote north pacific ocean and since his discovery more and others have engaged in rigorous scientific samplings of the plastic soup and its multiple consequences on the environment ortiz ramona go indo spoke with captain moore and explains how consumers consumer base because it's give me consumer based economies. are literally trashing the ocean this is the stomach contents of a four month old check bottle caps trash bags and broken plastic are now part of the diet of many birds and sea creatures around the world it's very depressing and michelin to realize the extent of the problem one of the largest concentrations of marine debris in the pacific ocean is halfway between hawaii and california called the great pacific garbage patch charles moore accidentally found the garbage patch in one thousand nine hundred seven wessling through a gyre ocean currents circulate and collect trash it's a piece here

a piece there it's not a solid island but in general what we see is a soup of plastic not really an island of plastic next year captain moore is planning to spend a month at the garbage patch to research its effects on the food chain it is difficult to see the collection of trash from above because it's mostly made up of pieces of plastic the size of a fingernail researchers believe that there could be two million of these little pieces of plastic persuade a mile millions of creatures are dying every year tangled in plastic it's not just the wildlife that is being fooled into eating this stuff and getting tangled in it it's we ourselves that are our changing. biological being with the chemicals in this hyper consumptive atmosphere that we live in scientists at the scripps institution of oceanography in san diego have also been trying to figure out how the marine debris is changing the world a scrip study estimated that fish in intermediate ocean depths of the pacific

ingest plastic at a rate of roughly twelve thousand to twenty four thousand tons a year this trash and it is helping to keep garbage out of the pacific ocean but despite efforts like this there are still tons of pieces of plastic just like this which continue to make their way out to sea clean up the mess that's already been made is likely impossible but experts say that the problem could potentially be solved with a radical change in economic and social culture when you hear politicians talk about growth you'd think it was one of the ten commandments for our very being is as consumers of product this defines us these days the brand of car we have the brown of hair gel we have a round of clothing that we have this is how we get our identity more use that consumption habits and our creature comforts have led to an earth shattering problem where to put all the trash we generate we really have to redefine ourselves as human beings as something other than a consumer in order to beat this problem new shorelines creative trash are

appearing in all oceans and even in america's great lakes as world economies continue to thrive on mass consumption caps and more will continue to sail and study the plastic oceans in los angeles ramon now in the r.t.e. . now you may have heard the story of jonah and the whale back from the biblical days but the just of it is that a well swallowed jonah who has disobeyed god's commands after a few days in the whale stomach though john repented and the whale eventually spit him out well it's unclear whether a proclamation from on high compel these comeback whales to try and swallow divers whole off the coast of central california or if they were just curious know what those dumplings and what suits tasted like because humpback whales have beilein in their mouths they normally much smaller fare than humans so it could have been nearly impossible for them to swallow the divers all of jonah and the whale but here's the one thing about the john the whale story that seems a bit odd how does

a person supposed to think clearly when stuck inside a whale's belly something to think about i marinate stay tuned prime interest is next. wealthy british study done. time to. go to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report on our.

is it possible to navigate the economy with all the details and to stick them for me and media hype will keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream status it's in your. download. stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television early just doesn't do so now with your mobile device you can watch your t.v. anytime anywhere.

good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm harry i'm going and i'm bugging bush and here's the stories that we're tracking today more details are emerging on the commodities manipulation front a federal reserve is reviewing the decision it made ten years ago to allow banks to use customer money to speculate and physical commodities such as copper crude oil and aluminum no word on the gold as that might actually force the fed to admit that it's being manipulated or that bernanke you know something about it but even if the fed reverses itself and bans bank commodities trading guess who gets a pass that's right goldman sachs and morgan stanley since they only became banks in two thousand and eight and they were grandfathered in end users of aluminum cans central to the goldman commodity.