Services were held yesterday in Kanab, Utah, for LaVoy Finicum, one of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers. Finicum was shot and killed last month during a confrontation with law enforcement near Burns, Oregon. The FBI has released video of the fatal encounter.

In an effort to stay on top of possible violent activity at the funeral where many of the occupiers’ supporters were expected to attend, the Utah Fusion Center issued a bulletin showing signs and symbols associated with “extremists” and “disaffected individuals.” The Gadsden flag, which is primarily first associated with the Revolutionary War, and more recently with the Tea Party movement, is prominently featured. It has also been used by US Soccer supporters, The American Outlaws.

Above the symbols to be on the lookout for, the bulletin reads:

Below are some visual indicators of these potential extremist and disaffected individuals: though some or parts of these symbols are representative of patriotic and American revolutionary themes; they are often associated with extremism:

The bulletin does nothing further to help law enforcement on the street determine threat levels. So why is this a problem? A former law enforcement officer comments:

Mike German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated far-right groups in the 1990s, has a similar objection. “I always try to look at these alerts from the perspective of the police officer on the street,” he says. “What will the officers know after reading this that they didn’t before? Here all they know is to be afraid if they see a Gadsden flag, which could result in an unnecessarily hostile encounter that would increase the chances of violence. There’s nothing here that would help them correctly identify someone who held these beliefs, understand what might trigger hostile reactions, or how to talk to them in a way that would defuse any unnecessary tension.” He also worries that the bulletin “improperly implies holding such beliefs makes them dangerous”; most of the people involved in these movements are nonviolent, he says, and treating them all like budding terrorists just makes a confrontation more likely.

German, who is now based at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, thinks it’s “perfectly reasonable for the fusion center to make law enforcement aware of the situation regarding the Oregon standoff and police shooting, and how the upcoming funeral might make those out-of-state events more pertinent to local enforcement needs and officer safety.” But he feels the report’s approach is “is unhelpful because it is overgeneralized in describing a threat and lacking in any useful advice. It seems almost like CYA, so they can say ‘we warned ’em’ if anything bad happens.”

You might also be interested to know that the Confederate flag has received the same type of threat assessment – its fate has been sealed as a racist symbol (thank you Nikki Haley). A young man was recently turned away from enlisting in the Marines because he had a Confederate flag tattoo. It is now a disqualifier for service, as it is considered on par with gang tattoos from the Aryan Nation, the Bloods, and the Crips.

This is your taxpayer money at work. “Fusion centers” are funded by Department of Homeland Security. They are supposed to look for terrorist activity. The accounting and oversight of these centers is highly questionable as a Senate committee reported in 2012. Their work is flawed, the money is unaccounted-for, and still they persist. Much more at the link:

This whole episode stinks. I can appreciate that occupying a federal facility was probably not the wisest tactical move to persuade most people to the cause, but don’t let that allow you to turn a blind eye to excessive government intrusion into our lives. These illustrations give a quick visual of that immense intrusion:

And here’s what the ownership looks like on the ground – the private area in some places is nearly non-existent:

So it’s clear that the seeds of the occupation were planted decades ago in the federal land grabs in the west. Then the federal government prosecuted two ranchers under the Terrorism Act for starting minor fires that spread to federal land. Then, when the government didn’t get the full five year mandatory minimum sentence for those convictions, it appealed the sentence resulting in sending the two ranchers, a 74 year old father and son, back to jail for four years. Then, a little more patience in ending the occupation surely would have been in order to avoid the killing of a man one day shy of his 55th birthday. Now, at his funeral, law enforcement are on the lookout for the Gadsden flag, and the information comes from a poorly supervised government agency. And in not unrelated action, you better hide your Confederate flag, you racist.

I always think it can’t get any worse. I’m always wrong.