video for your media project c.e.o. don carty dot com. the us police force has gotten leaner and meaner in some major cities police departments now have a force that looks more like a military unit will look at this trend ahead. and there's been a massive jailbreak out id rocks abu ghraib prison allowing the escape of al qaeda members the attack comes nearly a decade after the infamous photos of abuse at the prison were released more details coming out. and the house is considering amendments today to the defense spending bill one lawmaker is pushing to defund the n.s.a. surveillance program but have an update from the capitol hill in tonight's show i. live there it's tuesday july twenty third eight pm in washington d.c.

i marinate and you're watching our t.v. 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 more recently the department of homeland security has doled out grants for local police departments that 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've sworn to protect to discuss this issue i was joined by radley balko author of rise of the warrior cop i started off by asking him why swat teams have become so prevalent in the u.s. . well there are a lot of reasons for one the federal government to sort of encourage this with anti drug grants that go to these police departments so if you send your swat team out to arrest a murderer a 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 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 a free society now you've written that community policing where you know there's an officer walking the beat swinging the baton that is a better way of policing men is the polity is why so 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 they're 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 in the. they attend neighborhood meetings when 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 figured from the outside coming in to impose force upon them right now why you mention before the police departments are using

tanks why does a 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 police and arms to be used on american streets in america neighborhoods i think it's 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 are getting this equipment but after september eleventh 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.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 department so 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 actually yesterday morning ray kelly the police commissioner of the new york city police department or he did 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 me would be a form of. in itself now. who is being considered for the next head of the department of homeland security what would a d h 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 mostly 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 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 will they'll 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 the 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 there are 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 going to ask you to justify it when you have your own sort of ready at your beck and call you could 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. urgency 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 a process and it's just it's not an appropriate use of force for the threats 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. a new report from the washington lawyers committee for civil rights and 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 reactions from citizens in ward seven and eight. k.

. 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 dudgeon 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 they might be worse here only because of the historical size of the african-american population but no i don't think it don't you 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 in 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 and they come and pressure you out you know it so you don't move and you know with so many more black people getting arrested the numbers have many asking what's behind the racial disparity and 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 survey data on the drugs actually so that the rest of the usage rates are pretty similar using last month using last year or pretty similar across races so that it really raises the question why are ninety percent of these arrests taking place in the african-american community after the report was

released these 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 side d.c. judges who have seen the lasting effects of getting arrested they would have to report to the employer background checks whatever it is that that they have had contact adverse contact with the criminal justice system and often the opportunity to explain. away the situation ever develops civil rights attorneys say the effects go far beyond the initial arrest those of criminal background 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. o four and baghdad on monday iraqi security forces lockdown areas around the infamous abu ghraib prison and another high security detention facility on the outskirts of the city to hunt for hundreds of escaped inmates including some of al qaeda top militants after a daring and surgeon assault said hundreds of detainees free al qaeda has since claimed responsibility for the jailbreak now the carefully orchestrated late night attacks killed dozens on sunday on sunday night. including at least twenty five members of the iraqi security forces insurgents fired dozens of mortar shells and detonated suicide and car bombs join iraqi forces into firefights that lasted more than an hour now the two prisons attacked has thousands of inmates including convicted al qaeda militants and exactly one year ago al qaeda is iraqi army

started a campaign called breaking the walls that made frayn its imprisoned members a top priority to discuss this further i was joined earlier by saeed erik at a correspondent with al quds and former u.n. spokesperson iraq i began by asking him just how such a broad jailbreak could ever happen. it is a classical side operation it was it was begun of course using suicide by bombs in cars so that there is a classic. tactic they also had like a suggested mortars and they had militants attacked from different areas they cut off the road so it was will planned this 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 qaida they represent the. idea in iraq of this land state in iraq and the levant so it was well coordinated will funded will arm and it proves

anything proves that the al qaeda make an air resurgence and iraq now what kind of reaction are we seeing from people on the ground who just kind of went through this escape experience escape now went through that experience escape of more than five hundred prisoners well it was a nightmare for the iraqi security forces no doubt about it because when i was in the new iraq and as we discussed earlier i was in iraq for five years between two thousand and five and two thousand and ten and this break deal breaks 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 they claim that they caught some but i suspect that them an overwhelming majority are on the loose and that means that they can reorganize and attack government facilities over and over again ok now this prisoner saw it 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 is resurgent well i think it has a direct tie or related directly to what is happening in syria because the arm flow and i.d.l. aguilar. dickel inclination of both cars are like they are the most raw and in europe they work very closely together and the flow of arms into syria also found its way into iraq so all these elements in a work together the. militants are always been there. we have seen that iraq inability to resort to reconcile itself and have national dialogue and national reconciliation has really fragmented the country and so on we have problems in the north with the kurds we have problems in the south bus on the shia and iran and france and then on bar which is mainly sunni so you have the sectarian

divide is getting wider and wider and it has its ramifications are long long it now can you explain how our great has been years since its infamous time as a us president and the world basically says operation iraqi freedom and who is currently operating the facility well iraq is security forces not operating at 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 that was the place was torture under saddam it was a place for torture of doing 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 spent billions of dollars in iraq in the country 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.'s spent a significant amount of money while still l.n.h.

alienating a majority of the population which is what it's done in iraq what can you expand on this little bit of first of all the us 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. the treaty. project reconstruction teams these private reconstruction teams failed miserably they spend billions of dollars and they would start something and never finish it like schools and finds the factory electricity now look at iraq today it is still like three or four hours of electricity a day water is scarce basically services are scarce the health industry is really collapse and so on so instead of focusing on these aspects of reconstructing iraq they focused mainly on creating a strong security force and a strong military which remain divided along sectarian lines thank you very much there was a good accurate correspondent with our could. back here in the nation's capital the

house will vote on the latest amendments to the defense spending bill including the amash amendment which 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 commentator sam sack she joined us earlier from capitol hill with all 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 keep guns the n.s.a.'s program that uses section two fifteen of the patriot act to collect massive amounts of data on american citizens on 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 defies a 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 this to say that defunding the n.s.a. is section two fifteen surveillance program is is unwise 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 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 and 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 saw the senate intelligence chairs senator dianne feinstein and mike rogers come out and say that this is unwise we can. defend 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 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 go to even have a chance to limit these 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 in other news millions of pieces of trash are floating in the world's oceans and fundamentally changing the makeup of the earth's food chain in fact tons of plastic has accumulated into what is known as the great pacific garbage patch it was discovered in one thousand nine hundred seven by captain charles moore and he

describes it as actually a soup in mixture of micro plastic fragments that's wrong to vast belts in the remote north pacific ocean since his discovery however more and others have engaged in rigorous scientific sampling of the plastics and its multiple consequences on the environment archies ramon go into a spoke with captain moore and explains how 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 initially 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 the 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 an economic and social culture when you hear politicians talk about growth you'd think it was one of the ten commandments or 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 now you may have heard of the story of jonah and the whale back from the biblical days but the gist of it is that a well swallowed jonah was disobeying god's commands and after a few days in the well stomach jonah repented and the well eventually sped up. well well it's unclear whether a proclamation from on high compelled these humpback whales to try and swallow divers whole off the coast of central california or if they were just curious to know what those dumplings in the wetsuits tasted like because humpback whales have beilein in their mouths and they normally eat much smaller fare than humans men all that. would have been nearly impossible for them to solve the divers in the whale

now there's one thing about this john in the whale story that seems a bit off how is a person supposed to think clearly when stuck inside a whale's belly dancer. now with all the talk about government surveillance there's another type of surveillance that can be quick that can hit closer to home that's the growing industry of personal home surveillance for more on self serving the residents laurie harkness. here in the u.s. our government is watching everything we do online our police are putting up surveillance cameras at every street intersection they can a lot of people are

angry about the growing surveillance state but the truth is we are all becoming surveillance addicts and government and private citizens alike according to a recent security industry report an estimated eighteen percent of private u.s. households use professionally monitored security systems generating billions and profit and by twenty twenty that figure is expected to rise to thirty percent of households we are stirring up surveillance cameras ourselves everywhere and the systems we're using are getting smarter smarter and. there are popular systems like drop cam for one hundred fifty bucks you get a camera to set up anywhere you want and then you can watch what's going on live from a computer or your phone and the new home security system called canary takes it up a notch with software that learns about you what time you're usually home or not home if you have a pet or a cleaning lady and get smarter about what might be

a security threat in your house. and more and more private homeowners are actually contacting law enforcement on their own to let them know they have cameras in case they ever need to see them things private citizens are basically letting the police know that not only do they support video surveillance they want to actively participate in it. i'm not saying home video surveillance is a terrible idea seventy five percent of all crime in the us is property fast and you're much less likely to get robbed if you have obvious video surveillance according to the u.s. bureau of justice statistics i'm just saying clearly americans are buying into the surveillance state if we weren't surprised a surveillance industry would not be growing so rapidly. who knows maybe we're all buying into setting up our own cameras out of a sense if they can watch us we can watch them too but we watch a reality t.v.

where cameras just follow people around we use websites like foursquare where we just announce our location for no discernible benefit and we're putting up cameras all over the place we are addicted to surveillance and the sooner we admit to our addiction the sooner we can deal with the problem tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the resident. for more on the stories we covered you can go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our website archie dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at aaron aid and please don't forget to tune in at nine pm for a larry king now tonight special guests are mark paul goslar and breckon meyer the stars of the hit t.v. series franklin and that does it for now have

a great night. i was a new alert innovation secrets scared me a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy and in great things other that had the added rigor at the core of what. is the story sort of movies playing out in real life. good afternoon.