When State disaster declarations and municipal ordinances provide immunity for law enforcement and other first responders, it should be a red flag for citizens to exert extreme care in their interaction with edgy police.

The former mayoral and police administration apparently believed that disaster declarations were equivalent to martial law and provided an excuse to misbehave and ignore the Bill of Rights.  Peace officers confiscated weapons and other movables from good citizens who were in desperate need of their own self-defense assets.

Unfortunately, our criminal and civil justice apparatus has been unwilling to confront the underlying abuses of authority that enabled mass killings in both the health-care and criminal justice systems.

No question that these are difficult conditions for civil authorities to confront: civil unrest, mass looting and wanton aggression.

The failures of federal, state and local government have now revealed the worst case scenarios of state-sponsored terrorism manifesting itself in citizen murders by police and multiple civil rights prosecutions. There will be more hurricane disasters, and if government fails to address statist abuses, there could be more of the same.

The engineering negligence of the Corps of Engineers will be small potatoes compared against the potential for more intentional terrorist actions against a defenseless citizenry under the guise of homeland security.

The [Ashton] O’Dwyer case will be remembered as another government failure to deal with near-lethal governmental abuse that was obviously conceived, planned, executed and concealed by who knows how many public employees. This will prove to be a very frightening and unhealthy situation that stands as a monument to outrageous governmental abuse of authority.

Tragically, our U.S. history is replete with the worst, best examples of genocide through a strategy of Manifest Destiny against Native Americans and other minorities, so don’t say it couldn't happen here under the guise of Homeland Security Imperatives.