Is ISIS Jihad coming soon to your nearest theater! (See 1 below.)
Why ISIS appeals to Western girls! (See 1a below.)
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I understand why core Democrats and party elites will vote for their candidates but, for the life of me, I find it utterly incomprehensible why those who are capable of clear headed independent reasoning are voting for Democrats.
I am not suggesting Republicans are a great deal better but a radical incompetent Democrat is president and a vote for a Senator to continue Democrat control of the Senate under Harry Reid's thumb is insane.
Reid has run the Senate, not for the good of the nation but as a play pen to prevent Democrats voting for legislation that would make them vulnerable. Reid has changed Senate rules to bias conduct in favor of his party and , again, not in the best interest of the nation.
Supporting Obama's equally insane agenda borders on an act of perfidy.
This is is why I am so adamantly opposed to Ms. Nunn. Her first official vote will be to support Harry Reid who has allocated millions towards her campaign and it will be pay back time.
Nunn has painted herself with coatings used on Lockheed's stealth aircraft. No one truly knows where she stands, what she truly believes and will support unless you are willing to take her at her word that she will buck the establishment because she once ran an organization started by former President Bush and her daddy was a respected and competent Senator.
David Purdue was not my choice but at least he will stand opposed to Obama's continued reign as emperor.
Even Obama's own party has dumped him. Yet, Georgians seems willing to embrace him in the guise of a vote for Ms. Nunn.
I know Georgia is viewed by the rest of the nation as culturally more interested in 'Bubba' football than clear thinking. A vote for Ms.Nunn will simply validate the fact that strategic reasoning remains beyond our grasp.
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In my previous memo, I wrote that those who benefit from chaos perpetuate anti-Semitism.
Hamas is one such group. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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The White House and Justice Department played fast with the rules and it should make everyone who believed Obama when he said his administration would be the most open, furious. (See 3 below.)
And, burn baby burn? (See 3a below.)
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Dick
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1) The Homegrown Jihadist Threat Grows
ISIS’s online recruitment is reaching into North America, yet the Obama administration still has no strategy to fight it.
Three teenage girls from Colorado were on their way to join Islamic State, also known as ISIS, last week when they were caught by police in Frankfurt. Reports now suggest that the young women may have been victims of an “online predator” who lured them to travel to Turkey to link up with the jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq. ISIS has certainly proved skillful at using the Internet to spread its message of hatred and violence around the world, particularly through social-media sites like Twitter and the group’s online English-language magazine, Dabiq.
More Americans may be motivated to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS or other terrorist groups. The online radicalization efforts could also encourage “lone wolves” to undertake acts of terrorism within the U.S., similar to the two deadly terrorist attacks in Canada this week, both apparently motivated by ISIS’s online communications.
Islamic State “operates the most sophisticated propaganda machine” of any terrorist group today, as former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen noted in a speech at the Brookings Institution in September. Mr. Olsen warned of the possibility of an ISIS sympathizer “perhaps motivated by online propaganda,” who could “conduct a limited, self-directed attack here at home, with no warning.”
Al Qaeda’s online efforts have evoked similar fears over the past decade, and played a role in inspiring a number of terrorist attacks, including the Islamist terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, where 13 people were killed; the unsuccessful car bombing in Times Square in 2010; and the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, which killed four people.
Despite all this, the U.S. government still has no strategy to counter ISIS’s and al Qaeda’s violent online propaganda when it is directed at Americans. Several government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, have outreach programs to discuss this threat in meetings with community leaders in major cities. The FBI sometimes intervenes to dissuade individuals from engaging in extremist activity online by warning about the risks of illegal activity such as material support to a foreign terrorist organization. But such efforts have been sporadic and are carried out ad hoc, without a comprehensive strategy for countering the online radicalization of U.S. citizens.
In December 2011, the Obama administration said it would develop such a strategy. The White House rolled out the Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which promised that the administration “will develop a separate strategy focused on CVE online” that would analyze the role of the Internet, examine “the absence of clear national boundaries in online space and the relationship between international and domestic radicalization to violence,” and then assess legal issues and agencies’ authorities and capabilities.
In 2012, administration officials told Congress on several occasions that they were on the case. In April 2012, then-White House Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan sent a letter to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (one of the authors here), noting that “this issue is of such importance that it warrants a ‘separate, more comprehensive strategy,’ which we are developing.”
In September 2012, Janet Napolitano, DHS secretary at the time, said that “interagency partners are currently developing a strategy around countering violent extremism online” and that the “strategy focuses on leveraging Internet safety principles to protect communities from violent extremist propaganda.”
Two years later, there is still no strategy. In February 2013, the White House released a blog post titled “Working to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence in the United States” and an accompanying fact sheet that briefly discussed the issue. The fact sheet also listed existing related programs and noted the establishment of a new “Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence” that would address the issue.
The blog post addressed none of the specific issues mentioned in the Strategic Implementation Plan of December 2011. For example, it did not look at the relationship between domestic and international radicalization, and included no discussion of relevant legal issues and agency roles. There is no evidence that this new Interagency Working Group has done anything since the release of the blog post.
Without such a strategy in place, federal agencies have limited ability to develop programs that can counter the influence ISIS’s propaganda within the U.S. A strategy would allow government agencies—the DHS and Justice, for example—to develop a new U.S.-focused program, similar to an existing State Department program that is focused overseas. The strategy should also integrate counter-messaging with related Internet safety, community engagement and law-enforcement efforts.
Given the continuing threat that ISIS and al Qaeda pose to the homeland, and in light of the murderous ISIS-inspired attacks in Canada, the Obama administration should make this strategy a priority. That would help the U.S. combat the spread of a violent Islamist ideology, and reduce the threat of homegrown terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Mr. Lieberman, a former senator from Connecticut, is senior counsel at the law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman. Mr. Beckner is the deputy director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at the George Washington University. .
1a)
Why the Teenage Girls of Europe Are Joining ISIS
Teenage girls are the West’s center of gravity: Virtually all of Western pop culture, the key to our soft power, is tailored to the tastes of teenage girls. Through the wonders of information technology, the mobile phone mass-produced the mores and habits of phone-mad teenage girls locked in their bedrooms. Indeed, Western civilization is a success largely insofar as it has made the world a safe place for teenage girls—to go to school, get a job, and decide who and when to marry, or if they want to marry. When teenage girls turn away from One Direction and embrace ISIS, it means the West is losing.A Washington Institute poll last week showed that the Islamic State has more support in Europe than it does in the Middle East. The poll reported that only 3 percent of Egyptians, 5 percent of Saudis, and under 1 percent of Lebanese “expressed a positive opinion of the IS.” On the other hand, 7 percent of U.K. respondents had a favorable view of the group, as did 16 percent of French polled—with 27 percent of French citizens between 18-24 responding favorably.
The numbers should hardly come as a surprise. Thousands of young European Muslims have already left the continent for the Middle East to help the organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, build an authentic Islamic caliphate. Doubtless thousands more are on their way, to kill and die for an idea they believe in.
It is a striking fact that ISIS appeals not only to young men, but also young European women, many hundreds of whom have gone to Syria and Iraq to marry Islamic State fighters. Sure, some of them, like the 15-year-old French Jewish girl Nora el-Bathy, may have come to regret their decision. But that hardly alters the essential point: The girls sought out IS fighters because the West seems weak and unmanly and they pine for real men who are willing to kill and die for what they believe in.
Why? Europe’s got great health care, welfare, and lots of attractive young men and attractive women who, unlike the vast majority of women in the Middle East outside of Israel, are sexually available. So, why given a choice between a comfortable, if somewhat boring, life as a pharmacist in Hamburg, or fighting and dying in the desert, are thousands of Western Muslims opting for the latter?
Because, for all the awesome social services and consumer goods it can offer, Europe has become incapable of endowing the lives of its citizens, Muslim or not, with meaning. A generation of young European Muslims are giving up their relatively easy lives in Malmö, Marseilles, and Manchester for the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, because Europe is devoid of values worth living—or dying—for. They are leaving for the same reason that Europe’s Jews are moving to Israel: Strength and a sense of purpose can be found elsewhere, whether it’s ISIS, Vladimir Putin, Ali Khameni, or the IDF.
European security services are worried that the large number of jihadist fighters with Western passports are destined to cause trouble should they come back to the continent. They’re worried, they say, about the special skills militants might obtain abroad and then employ at home—like Mehdi Nemmouche, the Frenchman who killed four people at the Brussels Museum in May.
European authorities are missing the much more salient point. Nemmouche may have gone to Syria to fight alongside extremist groups, but it’s not like firing an automatic rifle is a specialized skill you can only learn on a jihadi battlefield. It’s not like you have to travel to the Middle East to learn to hate Jews. The problem isn’t what European Muslims may come back with from the Middle East, but the fact that they’ve left Europe in the first place. Baghdadi’s self-proclaimed caliphate sounds like an inside joke to IS’s two most significant military cadres—the Arab tribes, and former Baathists from Saddam Hussein’s regime. But to the Islamic State’s foreign fighters, especially its Western European contingent, the idea of a caliphate, ripped from the pages of Muslim history, resonates with a kind of existential authenticity missing from the vast and drab European suburbs warehousing Muslim youth.
And it’s precisely the violence of IS that appeals to the Europeans. For the Middle East, after all, despite Ayman al-Zawahiri’s alleged claims that IS is “too extreme” even for al-Qaida, there’s nothing exceptional about the bloodshed. The level of violence—beheadings, crucifixions, etc.—is par for the course in its regional politics. U.S. ally Saudi Arabia beheads criminals in the middle of Riyadh, and President Barack Obama’s new BFF in the region—an Iranian regime he calls rational—hangs criminals from construction cranes. But for the European fighters, the violence is more evidence of authenticity.Yes, what IS stands for is exceedingly stupid and vicious—like one of the evil Transformer figures that destroys everything in its way. But this is what happens when there’s a vacuum: Ugly ideas fill space. Looking around, it’s hard not to think that the ugly, the vicious, and the stupid have the upper hand these days, with little resistance from the so-called defenders of the good.
Vladimir Putin is a hip-hop icon because he’s got Europe eating out of his hand—he rolls large and can turn off Europe’s lights any time he wants. He can go as far into Ukraine as he likes because he knows the United States won’t stop him. Obama said that Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon, but after already acknowledging the clerical regime’s right to enrich uranium, the White House may now allow Iran to keep even more centrifuges. Israel may have crushed Hamas over the course of a 40-day Operation Protective Edge, but here come the Western nations, led by the United States, hosting a donor conference that will relieve Hamas of all responsibility for having brought death and destruction to Gaza. Why? Because they can no longer summon the vitality necessary to take down a gang of bearded terrorists with RPGs, and so they are hoping instead to buy them off.
What Europe’s disaffected youth see is that the Western powers roll over and take it, again and again. The issue isn’t that we enjoy being humiliated. It’s just that we don’t really believe there’s anything worth fighting for. And that’s why thousands of Europe’s young Muslim men have taken sides against us—and why 15-year-old girls hold us in contempt.
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2)--
Whether the violence in Jerusalem since the gruesome murder of Muhammad Abu-Khdeir in July amounts to a Third Intifada will only be clear in hindsight. But what the murder on Wednesday of Chaya Zissel Braun has shown, beyond the ruthlessness of the act and the enduring tension in Jerusalem, is the shrewdness of Hamas’s strategy of overthrowing the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank by, of all things, persistently killing innocent Israelis.
That is one of the ways Israel should view the recent developments in Jerusalem. When Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, a Hamas member and relative of a former head of the organization’s armed wing, turned his car into a lethal weapon on Wednesday, he was, whether by design or not, acting exactly according to the alleged Hamas coup plans exposed in August.
At the time, the Shin Bet said that it had exposed a Hamas plan to “overthrow the Palestinian Authority and seize control of Judea and Samaria.”
Many pictured a coup: the surrounding of the Muqata and the deposing of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority. But what the Shin Bet actually uncovered was a plan, coordinated from Hamas headquarters in Turkey, to establish a loose network of terror cells, comprising a total of 93 operatives, which would “destabilize the security situation in the West Bank and carry out a string of grave attacks in Israel.”
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch (left) and former Jerusalem District Police Chief Yossi Pariente visit the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, prior to the Jewish New Year, September 24, 2014 (photo credit: Flash90)
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch (left) and former Jerusalem District Police Chief Yossi Pariente visit the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, prior to the Jewish New Year, September 24, 2014 (photo credit: Flash90)
The Shin Bet left the rest unsaid: Israel, as happened in Gaza, would assign blame to the PA, seethe, and finally retaliate, weakening the PA to the point that Hamas could step in and finish it off.
And the reactions to the terror attack were, in fact, unusually harsh and directed squarely at PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, speaking from Washington, said that “there is none, nor has there ever been, in the Palestinian Authority a culture of peace, but rather a culture of incitement and jihad against Jews.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assigned blame to Hamas, but also to Abbas, “who just a few days ago incited attacks on Jews in Jerusalem,” as he said in a statement.
A poster honoring Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi issued by Fatah, October 23, 2014 (photo credit: Fatah Facebook page)
A poster honoring Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi issued by Fatah, October 23, 2014 (photo credit: Fatah Facebook page)
Hamas, of course, cannot take all of the credit for the roiling tension and constant drip of violence in the northern part of the city since the July murder. Other forces are at work, too – the friction on the Temple Mount and the status quo that leaves many Arab residents of East Jerusalem cut off from the West Bank and also unaffiliated, at least by citizenship, with Israel. Nonetheless, it is squarely within the organization’s interest to perpetuate instability so that even a random spark could light the fire of a third intifada.
Chaya Zisel Braun (Channel 2 Screenshot)
Chaya Zisel Braun (Channel 2 Screenshot)
“I say this and I repeat, I do not recognize an intifada,” Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch insisted Wednesday after the terror attack.
Instead, he said, there was “a rise of incidents” of late but one that, with the help of an increased police presence in the capital, “we will overcome.”
For Aharonovitch and the Israel Police, an organization beset by widespread malfeasance, that will be a tall order, and one hopefully achieved before the fire hops the fence and spreads to the West Bank.
2a)
Palestinian Terrorism is No Accident
Scene of terror shooting at Light Rail station Photo Newsshabi
On Wednesday afternoon, Abed al-Rahman Shaludi, a 21-year-old resident of east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, rammed his car at high speed into a group of people standing at one of the city’s light-rail stations.
After committing this “hit-and-run” terrorist attack, killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and wounding eight others, Shaludi ended up crashing into a pole. As he attempted to flee the scene on foot, he was shot by police. He was then taken to Hadassah hospital, where he died.
One of his uncles told reporters that Shaludi was a “normative” person who had merely lost control of his car, and therefore was a victim of cold-blooded murder by Israeli police.
But Shaludi’s record shows otherwise.
He has had two stints in jail — one for 14 months and another for 20 days — for throwing rocks at Jews. In addition, he had ties to Hamas.
Another of his uncles, Mohiyedine Sharif (known as “the electrician” for his expertise in explosives), was responsible for three major bus bombings. He was killed in 1998 in Ramallah, possibly by rivals in Fatah.
In addition, Shaludi had written pro-Hamas posts on his Facebook page, and following Wednesday’s attack, Hamas praised him as a proud member and martyr for their cause.
Internecine rivalries aside, Fatah also hailed Shaludi as a “heroic martyr” in a poster created for this purpose. The poster, which honors Shaludi for having carried out the attack against “settlers in occupied Jerusalem,” was distributed in Silwan. This is not only the neighborhood where Shaludi lived, but also the site of stepped-up Arab violence, due to the recent purchase of a number of homes by Jews. (Though Arabs are free to live anywhere in Israel, Jews are not welcome to reside among Arabs).
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of creating the climate of incitement which led to the attack, one of many incidents of violence in the Israeli capital of late.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh responded to the charge by omitting any reference to Wednesday’s attack: “Israeli escalation and incitement and continued occupation of Palestinian lands are the real reason for all the violence in Palestine and the region.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also lashed out at Netanyahu. “Instead of pursuing peace,” Erekat said, “[Netanyahu's] government systematically violates international law in order to consolidate its apartheid regime in Palestine.”
Really?
Let us take a look at the “peace pursuing” way in which Jerusalem Arabs reacted to the murder of a Jewish infant at the hands of an apprehended and justifiably killed terrorist:
Residents of Shuafat hurled rocks at the neighborhood light-rail station, virtually destroying the stop and two train cars.
Residents of Issawiya, near the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning pummeling police and Border Police forces with rocks.
Residents of Wadi Joz held a rock-throwing riot.
Residents of Ras Al-Amud threw rocks at a Jewish kindergarten on the Mount of Olives.
Residents of Jabel Mukaber threw rocks at Jewish pedestrians in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood.
Unidentified Arabs threw rocks at buses driving near Gethsemane.
An Arab assaulted an Israeli guard at a checkpoint at the entrance to southern Jerusalem.
And the list goes on.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat vowed to restore order to the city, which has seen a sharp rise in Arab violence since the beginning of the summer. This was when a group of vigilante Jews burned an Arab boy to death as revenge for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, events which contributed to the launch of Operation Protective Edge. Barkat’s aim is to crack down on violence, while increasing dialogue with Arab community leaders.
Despite his good intentions, this is not likely to have the desired effect. Though Netanyahu is correct in calling Abbas to task for incitement, and Barkat is right to express zero tolerance for the impossible conditions under which Jerusalemites have been living, there is a bigger picture to take into account.
On Wednesday, as Shaludi was racing his car into innocent commuters, a keffiyeh-clad Canadian named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed a soldier at Ottawa’s war memorial, before entering the adjacent parliament building and opening fire on everyone in sight. Zehaf-Bibeau, who recently applied for a passport to travel to Syria (undoubtedly to fight with the Islamic State group), was gunned down by House of Commons sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that Zehaf-Bibeau had no connection to Martin Couture-Rouleau, a Christian convert to Islam, who committed a “hit-and-run” terrorist attack on two soldiers in Quebec on Monday, one of whom has died.
Despite the fact that the above acts were technically unrelated, they are all part of the same global jihad against “infidels” everywhere and from whatever creed or religion, including Islam. Muslims who do not hold with the slaughter of Jews and Christians, the subjugation of women, the stoning of gays and the practice of decapitation are also fair game for brutality at the hands of their brethren.
It is a contagious form of barbarism that has young people the world over scrambling to sign up. Palestinians are no exception.
It is this greater burden that makes peace impossible. Anyone who holds Israel the least bit responsible is as complicit in the spread of Islamist blood-lust as a hit-and-run baby killer.
Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’” This article was originally published by Israel Hayom.
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3) White House: Ask DOJ About What's in The Fast and Furious Documents Covered By Obama's Executive Privilege
By Katie Pavlich
During the daily briefing at the White House Friday afternoon, Press Secretary Josh Earnest dodged questions related to Attorney General Eric Holder's role in Operation Fast and Furious after a Vaughn Index or list of documents being held under President Obama's assertion of executive privilege, was released yesterday by Judicial Watch. An initial review of the Vaughn Index shows 20 emails between Holder and his wife Sharon Malone and his mother were covered in the documents currently protected under Obama's executive privilege claim.
When asked by Fox News' Ed Henry about why those communications were covered and what was discussed, Earnest deferred all questions to the Department of Justice.
"Did the Attorney General talk about this sensitive gun running operation with his wife and is mother and that's why he [President Obama] had to invoke executive privilege?" Henry asked.
"Well Ed I'd refer you to the Department of Justice about this," Earnest said.
"It wasn't justice privilege it was executive privilege. It was invoked by the president not the attorney general right?" Henry followed up.
"I can tell you that it's the Department of Justice that can discuss those emails with you. What is clear is that this lawsuit that has been filed by Judicial Watch actually has nothing to do with the actual Fast and Furious operation, it has to do with emails and documents related to the operation," Earnest said. "This is something that has been thoroughly investigated."
Earnest went on to argue the Department of Justice has turned over an adequate amount of information and documentation about the lethal operation to Congress. He also said the White House has showed legitimate cooperation with the investigation into this matter.
3a)--
Missouri police prepare for violence following grand jury decision
Missouri police have been brushing up on constitutional rights and stocking up on riot gear to prepare for a grand jury's decision about whether to charge a white police officer who fatally shot a black 18-year-old in suburban St. Louis.
The preparations are aimed at avoiding a renewed outbreak of violence during the potentially large demonstrations that could follow an announcement of whether Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson will face a criminal trial for the Aug. 9 death of Michael Brown.
Police and protesters have repeatedly clashed since the shooting, which prompted a national conversation about race and police tactics. Images of officers in riot gear and armored vehicles confronting protesters have drawn widespread criticism.
Many protesters want Wilson indicted for murder. Grand jury proceedings are secret, but legal analysts say recently leaked information about Wilson's testimony to investigators may be an attempt to prepare the public for the possibility that he might not be charged.
The decision could be made public within the next month.
In the meantime, law officers have adjusted their tactics to interact more peacefully with protesters while also honing their procedures for quick, widespread arrests. They plan to have a large contingent of officers at the ready, but have been meeting with clergy, community leaders and students in hopes of building relationships that could ease tensions on the streets.
"I know there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of fear, anticipation" about that announcement, said Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who was put in charge of security in Ferguson in the days after Brown was killed and is now part of a coordinated command with local police. But "I have a lot of hope."
Law enforcement officers expect to receive at least a day's notice before a grand jury announcement. That should provide time for them to execute security plans but may also allow demonstrators to prepare.
"The moment I learn that there is, in fact, a non-indictment, then there's going to be an organized protest," said Eric Vickers, a black St. Louis attorney and civil rights activist.
Brown was unarmed when Wilson encountered him walking in the street with a friend. A scuffle ensued and Brown was shot multiple times. Witness accounts of what happened varied, with some people saying they saw Brown raise his hands as if in surrender.
Wilson told investigators he felt threatened while fighting with Brown from inside a police SUV, where an initial gunshot was fired, according to information provided to several news outlets by people described as familiar with the investigation, but not otherwise identified. After Brown fled the vehicle, Wilson said Brown turned around in a threatening manner, prompting the officer to fire the fatal shots, according to those accounts of his testimony.
Wilson's description of events was leaked recently, as was an autopsy report that showed Brown had marijuana in his system and was shot in the hand at close range. Wilson has alleged Brown was trying to grab his gun in the SUV.
"It appears that it may be calculated to soften the blow if there is no indictment," said Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who directs the school's Criminal Justice Clinic.
But, he said, "it's conceivable that if the leaks are from law enforcement that perhaps there may be an indictment and this is calculated to garner public sympathy for officer Wilson."
Wilson's attorneys have denied being the source of the reports.
The shooting stoked long-simmering racial tensions in Ferguson, a predominantly black community with an overwhelmingly white police force. Protests have continued for two months in the St. Louis area, often peaceful but sometimes devolving into clashes between police firing tear gas and demonstrators lobbing rocks and bottles.
Law enforcement agencies have declined to say whether they will proactively line the streets with more officers as the grand jury announcement is made or position them in strategic locations to react as needed.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said he's learned it works better to let sergeants and lieutenants retain their normal place in the chain of command, instead of supplanting them with higher-ranking officers.
"We've also learned we have to have a dialogue with our demonstrators, so they know what to expect from us, and we know what to expect from them," Belmar said.
Amnesty International on Thursday released a report documenting what it described as human rights abuses by police during the protests following Brown's death. The report accuses police of violating citizens' rights by intimidating protesters using riot gear, aiming high-powered weapons at people, using tear gas, firing rubber bullets and flash-bangs, and setting curfews.
Police are attempting to better document events and handle widespread arrests more efficiently. To ensure the state Highway Patrol is at full strength, it is limiting trooper vacations around the time of a potential decision, and local police may be put on longer shifts.
After the initial clashes with protesters, the state Highway Patrol purchased more shields and equipment for its officers. St. Louis city police recently spent $325,000 upgrading helmets, sticks and other "civil disobedience equipment," said Police Chief Sam Dotson.
More than 350 St. Louis officers now have been trained in civil disobedience tactics. St. Louis County police and state troopers also have undergone training, focused largely on ensuring they understand protesters' constitutional rights.
Belmar, Johnson and other law officers have been meeting frequently with clergy, students and community leaders. Pastors, in turn, have been preaching messages of non-violence.
Earlier this week, Democratic state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, of St. Louis, intentionally got arrested for refusing to leave the street in front of the Ferguson Police Department. Even that was an act preparation. Nasheed said she wanted to show others that "you can peacefully protest, but you don't have to be violent under the banner of justice for Michael Brown."
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