Trump considering big changes in U.S. policing

President Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon, his senior advisor who also sits on the National Security Council, have proposed to the President a massive change in the way that American law enforcement agencies are organized, according to Breitbart News, which first broke the story.

The President is considering merging the country’s police departments, which have traditionally been under the control of local jurisdictions such as cities and towns, with state Highway Patrols and county Sheriffs’ Departments, into a single, unified domestic security agency. The new force would be housed within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The combined force, to be called the Head Office for Security (HOS), would report directly to Homeland Security director John F. Kelly, but its operational head would be Henry Hammler, 57, a longtime aide to Bannon when the latter was head of Breitbart News. Hammler, a former poultry farmer and Army major, served in a non-combat capacity in the 1983 invasion of Grenada under former President Ronald Reagan.

According to sources, the HOS would be divided into two sections: an administrative wing and a financial wing. The proposed head of the administrative wing is said to be Richard Heydrich, a nephew of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher currently on trial for taking over Federal land. Leading the financial wing would be Dr. Julius W. Streicher, most recently a senior vice president for political affairs at Goldman Sachs.

An insider, who did not want to be named, told Breitbart that Flynn and Bannon proposed the change in order to streamline the nation’s multi-layered security apparatus, to allow President Trump “greater flexibility in determining how to deal with threats to national security, both foreign and domestic.” Since taking office, Trump is known to have complained about how complicated law enforcement in the U.S. is, with dozens of competing agencies, ranging from town constables to National Guards to the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the source, “He [Trump] wants to be able to give an order and have it apply anywhere and everywhere, instantly, without getting hung up in the bureaucracy.”

The idea of merging local and state police forces with federal security forces, without judicial enforcement, has generally been shunned in democracies, although it is standard practice in countries such as Zimbabwe and North Korea. In the West, the last time such forces were joined into a single entity, under the supreme authority of a leader, was in 1939, in Germany, when Adolf Hitler merged all law enforcement agencies into his Head Office for Reich Security.

The source said that at a recent meeting of the National Security Council, where the idea was discussed, Trump insisted that the new HOS would not be anything like Hitler’s Nazi regime. “That’s stupid,” Trump was reported to have replied when unidentified members of the N.S.C. questioned him about it. “This is nothing like the Nazis. Hitler was insane—although I do respect his ability to bring Germany together. Our new Head Office for Security will be completely different, that I can tell you.”

The changes would have to be approved by Congress. According to Breitbart, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Speaker of the House of Representatives, when asked about the proposed changes, said he was not familiar with the plan. “I haven’t seen details yet. But President Trump is in the best position to determine how best to protect the people of the United States from harm, and if that’s something he feels is in the national interest, I’m sure that patriots in the House and Senate will be open to it.”

Trump is said to be anticipating fast approval of the new HOS and has even begun thinking about a new look for its officers. The source said that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who has run her own fashion company, is designing a uniform for high rankers. “Ivanka loves black for sheer elegance, but she’s concerned that all-black might be too severe,” the source said, adding, “She wants hints of color, but she doesn’t want it to look frivolous.”

This blog has obtained an exclusive sketch of Ivanka’s design, below. Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s senior counsel, told me that the cross-like figure on the hat “is not a religious reference. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s a ‘T’. For ‘Trump.’”