Infowars.com
May 17, 2013<\/p>\n
The Palm Beach County Sheriff\u2019s office has been forced to respond to a huge backlash against a $3.2 million dollar \u201cviolence prevention program\u201d that encourages neighbors to report on each other for \u201csuspicious behavior,\u201d with authorities claiming the project will not be used to target gun owners who criticize the government.<\/p>\n
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As we\u00a0reported earlier this month<\/a>, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw introduced the program, which is set to receive $1 million in funding from the Florida Legislature, with the promise that people considered violent who spout rhetoric about \u2018hating the government\u2019 would receive home visits from police and mental health professionals.<\/p>\n The campaign would also include \u201cpublic service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors,\u201d prompting critics to make comparisons to the former East German Stasi.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of a massive public backlash, Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist for the sheriff\u2019s office,\u00a0told the Florida Sun-Sentinel<\/a>\u00a0that the intention of the program had been \u201cwidely misinterpreted.\u201d<\/p>\n If your neighbor has \u201can arsenal of weapons and has made anti-governmental comments but has not made threats,\u201d this person would be left alone, said Iarossi.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t convinced critics of the program on both the left and right, who continue to denounce the very notion of neighbors reporting on each other as un-American, including former Soviet Union resident Dmitry Levin, who remarked, \u201cIt\u2019s a specific telephone line to report your neighbor who doesn\u2019t like the government. \u201cWhen I read that, my jaw dropped. That\u2019s KGB in its finest form. The next step would be, what, bonuses for reporting?\u201d<\/p>\n The Sheriff\u2019s office claims the program is purely designed to \u201cprevent violence,\u201d but as mental health workers have pointed out, the money would better be spent on existing mental health services.<\/p>\n *********************<\/p>\n Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for\u00a0Infowars.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Prison Planet.com<\/a>. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.<\/p>\n <!– <\/p>\n –><\/p>\n This article was posted: Friday, May 17, 2013 at 3:19 pm<\/p>\n Tags: police state<\/a><\/p>\n
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