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Presque Isle Police Chief Responds to FFJ Digital Radio Story

Chief Irwin admits law enforcement is necessarily “paramilitary”

By: David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal, March 21, 2012

In the February 22, 2012 edition of Fort Fairfield Journal, a front page article was published describing the Presque Isle Police Department’s conversion to an encrypted digital radio technology.

This writer interviewed Kevin Robinson from Aroostook Technologies, the company that sold the radios and John Williams from GRE America, a company that makes digital-ready scanners. PIPD Chief Matt Irwin was also asked to respond to some of the negative implications of the digital conversion that concern some citizens, but refused to respond directly to Fort Fairfield Journal before the article was published.

Shortly after that story was published in FFJ, Chief Irwin did issue a rebuttal on the PIPD Facebook page entitled, “Setting the Record Straight” - implying that the information contained within the FFJ story, and from those interviewed, was somehow incorrect. However, all the Chief did was admit in roundabout way that the information was factual before launching into an apologetic campaign for bloated, big government police state tactics.

“While the system purchased by PI has the capabilities described by Mr. Deschesne, PIPD has not instituted the level of encryption he asserts,” wrote Chief Irwin on his Facebook op-ed, “we are only using the basic level of encryption which permits other law enforcement agencies with similar radios to easily communicate with the PIPD officers.’

The Chief’s argument here, in legal terms, is called a “straw man” argument; where something not entirely true is claimed and then the argument proceeds against that statement. What the FFJ story really indicated was the PIPD’s radio transmissions were simply digital and encrypted so people who use normal, analog scanners—which is predominantly the scanner type in use today—or a digital-ready scanner without the encryption key code, will be unable to hear the officers’ transmissions any longer. No “level” of encryption was either noted or asserted.

Whether encryption is the “basic level,” as Chief Irwin says PIPD is using, or some form of advanced level, is irrelevant when considering reception on a normal police band scanner. A digital bit stream from basic 8-bit encryption using Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) transmission will sound essentially like a digital bit stream from an advanced 256 bit TDMA-based encryption transmission—it will all be garbled audio. So, encrypted is encrypted for the purposes of conventional police band scanners, even if it’s the “basic level.”

One of the concerns levied by critics of the conversion to encrypted digital in the FFJ story is that it is a covert form of paramilitary communications. In his Facebook op-ed, Chief Irwin admits, “...by design, law enforcement is necessarily a ‘paramilitary’ function of government,” thus confirming the concerns of those who monitor the rising police state in the U.S. and now northern Maine.

In the comment section of that Facebook op-ed, Facebook friends of PIPD were able to log their responses to Chief Irwin’s article. Rather than dealing with the facts as presented in the FFJ article, the respondents instead either blindly sided with the chief or lobbed juvenile-level attacks on this writer and belittled the FFJ in general.

Some of the comments of PIPD’s Facebook friends (and this writer’s comments in parentheses) were;

 

Joseph L.: “If you read the fort fairfield review [sic] you will see that Mr. deschesne [sic] accuses the fort police Dept. Of the same things. One could assume that David Deschesne is slightly delusional”

(editor: No, I’ve studied history, which tends to repeat itself, and have found this condescending attitude by the police prevalent in all other police state societies. Furthermore, the Fort Fairfield Review has been out of business for 8 years. The paper is now called the Fort Fairfield Journal.)

 

Allen M.: Just heard that with the purchase of every Fort Fairfield Review Mr. Deschesne will be giving away a free tinfoil hat...”

(editor: Again, it’s not the Review, it’s the Journal. As for tinfoil hats, as an FCC-licensed, Extra class Amateur radio operator [call sign, KB1EBG—look it up], I can confirm tinfoil hats do not work, so I don’t recommend them.)

 

Jen L.: “Tell him to let the real journalists report on the news!”

(editor: Define, "real journalists." Are they those who only report the government-friendly, whitewashed version of events and cover up for the growing police state? Unfortunately, we already have plenty of them in the news business.)

 

Shelly R.: “Mr. Deschesne needs a hobby. The Fort Fairfield review use [sic] to be a decent paper, but with all his drivel it has become a rag that’s not worth putting at the bottom of a bird cage.”

(editor: I’m merely reporting the facts. It only appears to be ‘drivel’ because you have been psychologically programmed by the corporate-controlled mainstream media to think so. Your mind has been imprisoned.)

 

Shawn N.: “David needs to buy a dog and name it ‘Life’ so he has one. His rants about the local, state and federal governments are skewed and twisted to his personal beliefs to achieve a negative reaction that taunts and attempts to instill fear to those few people who read it. The FFJ is not news, it’s an opinion publication. The Enquirer is more reliable ‘news.’”

(editor: I already have more “Life” than I can handle. My beliefs about government are based upon a study of history and verifiable fact. Perhaps you should read Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” or Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” to get a better understanding of the model our local, state and federal law enforcement are now following. It ain’t gonna be pretty.)

 

Ben B.: the Guy is a whackjob! Hopefully he knows that 99% of the people that read that toilet paper he calls news don’t take him seriously. Paranoid little creeper...”

(editor: Those types of vitriolic comments that the government’s public opinion molders have engrained in society are what makes 99% of the population the prison wardens for the minds of those few who dare to study history and question government. That is why most news organizations, and private people as well, choose to keep their mouths shut about government and corporate corruption. Not me.)

 

L. Johnston: “Roughest toilet paper I’ve ever purchased. You’d think for 90 cents it would at least be fit for that.”

(editor: You can buy a roll of regular toilet paper at Hillside IGA for 69 cents and it’s much softer.)

 

Kathy M.: “There’s a big difference between journalism and sensationalizing and distorting the facts to suit one’s own agenda—with ethics being the differentiating factor.”

(editor: If you bothered to read my original story on the subject, you will find that it was all based on fact. I merely asked the chief to respond to some concerns by critics and that portion was only about ten percent of the story. At least I reached out for the other side’s perspective before writing. How about you?)

 

This type of behavior by the masses has been programmed into society by the government’s psychological warfare experts. Rather than directly quash free speech, corpora-government uses surrogates within the general public to quash it for them by training them to use vitriol, negative attacks and belittling to prevent a message not friendly to corpora-government from either getting out, or being accepted. These type of people literally are the new NAZI prison wardens and the collective society’s mind is the new prison camp.

There was, however, one positive comment for FFJ on the PIPD’s Facebook page. John C. wrote, “I subscribe to the FF Journal, and I find that David’s articles offer foresight into future trends, long before the mainstream media catches on to the topic. you would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see the trend: awash in borrowed Federal stimulus dollars, local police departments everywhere are morphing into anti-terrorist paramilitary SWAT teams. The Chief acknowledges this in his rebuttal to David’s article. I robustly support law enforcement. However, encrypted radios is just another movement in the trend toward a police state. Hey, you Libs out there, surely you still value your civil liberties? The police department is accountable to the citizenry of a community. It is good that local law enforcement activity can be monitored by a vigilant local populace. In our small communities, methinks we can do without the military style tactics. Presque Isle isn’t Baghdad!”

 

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