Chuck's Interview with Chief of Police, Joe Hendricks Excerpts from "Chuck Baldwin Live"
May 28, 1997Chuck Baldwin: Chief Hendricks, thank you for being on "Chuck Baldwin Live.Joe Hendricks: Thank you for inviting me, Chuck.
Chuck Baldwin: We're delighted to have you, Sir. Begin, please, by introducing yourself to our audience. Give us a little bit about your background and Windsor, Missouri.
Joe Hendricks: Ok. Windsor is a small, tourist-based community. We're about 85 miles southeast of Kansas City, Missouri in the tri-lakes region. We're right on the shores of Truman Lake. It's a community of about 3,400. We're just south of the Whitman Air Force Base. I've been Police Chief here since October the 1st of 1995. Prior to that I served with the Missouri State Highway Patrol and then before that was a deputy sheriff and a city policeman. I've had a total of 14 years of law enforcement experience.
Chuck Baldwin: Very good. You wrote an article entitled, " Federal Law Enforcement Powers Grow." I found it fascinating. Tell us how you came to write this article. Where did it appear? Then let's get into the meat of what you had to say.
Joe Hendricks: Ok. Let me go back and give you a little background. All the police officers" agencies get information from federal agencies concerning militia groups, hate-groups, Neo-Nazi groups etc. And we were continually getting information about how dangerous various militia groups were, what a threat they were to law enforcement officers and really only getting one side of the story. So, I was talking with a friend one day and I mentioned this and we talked about militias for a little while and he gave me the phone number of an acquaintance of his who was affiliated with the Missouri 51st Militia, which is headquartered here in Kansas City. So, out of curiosity and wanting to hear the other side of the story I contacted Jim McKenzie, who is the organizer and commander of this militia. I met with him and his brother, Mike, and Caroline Hart, who's the editor of their newsletter. And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting some gun-waving, anti-government fanatics and that's not what I found. We met at a local restaurant not too far from Windsor and we had a really good conversation. Jim placed me on the mailing list of their newsletter. One day there was an article in there talking about the growth of federal law enforcement and it piqued my interest in the subject. So, I went and did a little research. I talked to other police officers and federal agents. I then put together this article and submitted it to Caroline. She liked it well enough, so it ended up being first printed in the newsletter of the 51st Missouri Militia.
Now, let me say: I am not a member of the militia. I don't subscribe to any wild, anti-government fanaticism. The purpose of my article is I'm concerned about the way federal law enforcement powers have grown and expanded and, in many cases, abused recently. That was the focal point of what I was looking at. The main purpose behind the article was a little information-gathering on my part. And also it was an attempt to enlighten others to what I see on a day-to-day basis.
Chuck Baldwin: Well, let's talk about that. What do you see as a career law enforcement officer and as a Chief of Police? How do you perceive the supposed threat of citizen militias or, as they are called, "right-wing militias?"
Joe Hendricks: I don't perceive a threat to law enforcement officers on the level that we are being told. Now, granted the two brothers in Ohio that got in the shoot-out with the Ohio State Troopers have been associated with militias, but they have also been associated with right-wing hate groups.
Chuck Baldwin: So you distinguish between the two?
Joe Hendricks: Yea. I have to distinguish between the two. In the constitution charter of the Missouri 51st Militia they will not harbor people who are filled with any type of racial hatred. In fact, in one of their more recent newsletters their Chaplain stated that hate is useless, that it accomplishes 100% of nothing. And if you harbor hatred then you don't need to be in the Missouri 51st Militia. There are some groups that call themselves militias that harbor racial bigotry. And I don't like that.
Let me get back to your initial question. As far as the threat to law enforcement, yes, there are some extremist groups that are certainly a threat to law enforcement. But I have to distinguish between good people and bad people. There are good mlitias and bad militias. I personally do not subscribe to any of these government conspiracy theories. I don't subscribe to any group that puts forth racial hatred or white supremacist ideology. These type groups would be a significant threat to law enforcement. But, the other groups, and I would put the Missouri 51st Militia in this category, that I do not believe pose a threat to law enforcement. They participated in sandbagging during the floods we had not too long ago. They have participated in searches for missing children and things like that. You gotta kind of draw a line there, Chuck. You can't lump everybody all together in one category.
Chuck Baldwin: Right. You began by saying that you had received information from federal agencies to be on the look out for right-wing militias. Do you perceive that the Feds recognize the distinction that you just described to me? Or, do they have a tendency to lump all these groups together?
Joe Hendricks: Shortly after this article was published in the militia newsletter I received a visit from an FBI agent in my office. I think he just wanted to put a face with a name and find out who is this guy is, rather than show any type of intimidation or "We're going to get you" or anything like that. But, one of his statements to me was, "Well even the 51st won't tell you everything." Well, you know, having sat down with Jim, Mike and Caroline and discussed a lot ofthings with them and after receiving their monthly newsletter, I have yet to see anything in the Missouri 51st Militia that would be a threat to a law enforcement officer. So, to answer your question, I think, yes, the federal authorities do tend to lump them all into one group.
Chuck Baldwin: Well there is no doubt that the national news media does.
Joe Hendricks: Oh sure.
Chuck Baldwin: Joe, here in the Pensacola metropolitan area which is comprised of two counties, Escambia and Santa Rosa, both of the boards of County Commissioners have recognized the constitutional right of citizens to form citizen militias. The Florida constitution recognizes the organized militia, the National Guard, and the unorganized mlitia which is comprised of private citizens. Does the State of Missouri have similar documentation?
Joe Hendricks: Yes. The Missouri constitution does allow citizen mlitias. But, at the same time, Missouri law prohibits paramilitary training by those citizen militias.
Chuck Baldwin: As I understand citizen militias, it is basically the right of the people to keep and bear arms. That private citizens form the ultimate line of self-defense.
Joe Hendricks: Well sure. The Second Amendment was written in very plain english: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That is very clear cut, Chuck. As a law enforcement officer I am governed by the Constitution, by laws and court decisions.
Chuck Baldwin: Let's answer those who say that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals but only to the National Guard.
Joe Hendricks: Well, you have to look at American history, Chuck. When the first shots were fired in the American Revolution who were they fired by?
Chuck Baldwin: They were fired by private citizens.
Joe Hendricks: They were fired by private citizens, Minutemen, a citizen militia. The Founding Fathers of our country understood that the reason for citizens to be able to keep and bear arms is to not only protect themselves but to protect themselves from tyranny. When the American people, or the colonists, felt that they were being terrorized by England what did they do? They took up their arms. They threw off tyranny. They declared their independence. And here we are some 200 odd years later. So the intent of the Founding Fathers in the Second Amendment was to ensure the security of a free state.
Chuck Baldwin: I find it interesting that those who want to relegate the Second Amendment to the state don't have that same feeling about the other Amendments. It's funny how the other Amendments apply to individuals but only the Second Amendment applies to the state. A little inconsistent, I think.
Joe Hendricks: But, you know, more than just the attacking the Second Amendment, Chuck, this is an attack on the Bill of Rights. It is so easy to chip away and one at a time get rid of them or annul them or repeal them. Pretty soon you don't have a Bill of Rights.
Chuck Baldwin: Well, right behind the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion the Founders placed the freedom to own firearms. I think that the first and all the rest of the amendments are predicated and dependent on the second.
Joe, I hear so much from this President and from the Charlie Schumers and Patsy Schroeders of Congress that law enforcement is united in their desire for more stringent gun control. Would you please address this from your perspective as a Chief of Police.
Joe Hendricks: I am opposed to gun control. Let me qualify this statement a bit. I am in favor of those convicted of a violent felony crime not being allowed to own a firearm. I have no problem withthat. But if you are a law abiding citizen and you have had no felony convictions for violent crime I see no problems with you carrying a concealed weapon about your person or owning a firearm. You know, owning a firearm is a basic right guaranteed in the American Constitution. So, for certain individuals in our government to get on national television and surround themselves by Chiefs of Police from large metropolitan areas who flew there at taxpayer expense and give the impression that all law enforcement favors gun control is just not the case, Chuck.
Chuck Baldwin: In fact the latest surveys that I've seen by the American Federation of Police and the Law Enforcement Alliance of America state that the majority of Chiefs of Police around the country do not support gun control.
Joe Hendricks: Well, I filled out that same survey. When the International Association of Chiefs of Police sent out that survey, I want to say it was last summer sometime, I filled it out. I checked all the blanks and mailed it right back to them. I never saw the results of that survey. I don't know exactly what the percentages were or the numbers were of who supports gun control and who does not among the members of the Police Chiefs Association.
Chuck Baldwin: I don't have it in front of me but I can tell you an overwhelming majority of them opposed gun control.
Joe Hendricks: Well, sure.
Chuck Baldwin: So, what, if any, is the correlation between gun control and crime?
Joe Hendricks: Well, I think it's like the old axiom: "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." That's true, Chuck. That's it in a nutshell. When you come right down to it gun control is not crime control. There is no reason for me as a law enforcement officer to feel threatened by a citizen who owns a firearm.
Chuck Baldwin: Isn't it true that if gun control was the answer to criminal activity, that places like Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, and other major urban areas would be basically crime-free because they have the most stringent gun control laws in the nation? And yet that is not the case.
Joe Hendricks: Oh sure, sure. I agree with that whole-heartedly. Every now and then you see reports of Japan which only had nine persons or whatever killed with firearms this year. Or this other country only had so many people killed with firearms this year. But that's just showing the numbers that are killed by firearms. It doesn't show the number of people that were murdered by other means. You know, before people were killing people with firearms they were killing people with clubs and spears and swords. Banning guns is not going to stop crime.
Chuck Baldwin: It's not going to change human nature is it?
Joe Hendricks: No, not at all.
Chuck Baldwin: Another thing we have to ask ourselves when we compare our crime rate to other nations is the difference between the cultures. How far toward Socialism and a state-run society do we want to go as Americans? Most of these other nations they point to are state-run, socialist societies. And that's not what America is all about.
And that leads us to your article. Would you expound a little bit about what you see concerning the increased federalization of law enforcement?
Joe Hendricks: Well, Ijust went back into the history of federal law enforcement, what it was when it started and what it has turned into. When the Constitution was ratified and adopted there were three federal crimes: treason, counterfeiting and piracy. The enforcement of those three fell upon the Treasury, the Navy and the Department of War. Today we have 33 federal agencies that have law enforcement authority. Those 33 federal agencies enforce more than three thousand federal criminal laws. Criminal laws, that in many cases are duplicated on the local and state level. So, in my opinion, slowly and surely we are being led toward a national police force.
Look back at what has gone on in the past few years where local law enforcement authority was crucified and federal agents went in to take care of a certain problem and it just blew up in their faces. Of course, I'm talking about Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas. Now I don't know anything about Randy Weaver. I don't know what his beliefs are. All I know about him is he was a separatist and he lived up in Idaho and he wanted to be left alone. And he bought a sawed-off shotgun, an illegal weapon under Idaho law, from an undercover informant and it ended up in a standoff where his wife, his fourteen year old son were killed by a federal agent. In Waco you had a religious cult barricaded, well armed and the ATF knew that their hand had been tipped. They knew that the Davidians were expecting them but nobody had the guts to say, "STOP! This has gone too far, let's back off."
After both incidents the sheriffs of the respective counties said that they felt they could have gone in and have gotten that individual and brought them out and turned them over to federal custody without any bloodshed.
Chuck Baldwin: Right.
Joe Hendricks: The sheriff in Waco said that David Koresh ran up and down that paved highway everyday for his five mile jog and would have been very easy to pick him up and take care of the problem. But apparently the Feds did not want to do that. They just wanted to rush in whole-hog and take care of everything. Now, like I said earlier, I don't espouse any of the two groups' beliefs but if the local authorities were familiar with them, knew their routine, knew where they were going to be, why didn't the Feds work with them and try to get the thing settled with no bloodshed instead of ending up in a 51 day standoff and 67 people dying?
Chuck Baldwin: Well, those are the two most heralded cases, of course, but there are scores of cases all across the country where federal agencies have usurped Constitutional power and the lives of individuals have been taken, even innocent life, without even the knowledge of local law enforcement.
Joe Hendricks: Yes. There are two cases right now in Missouri where ATF and DEA agents raided homes where illegal weapons and drugs were expected to be. They go into the house, one individual whom the ATF raided dialed 911 and reached for his handgun and was shot to death by ATF agents. But guess what? They found no illegal weapons.
Now granted, police agencies, all police agencies make mistakes. We do things wrong. We are not perfect. But the federal government lately has been making very well publicized mistakes. And the incident at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and the incident at Waco, Texas, the incident down here in the boothill of Missouri where the lady was killed, they go in and they raid and they're in their black jackets and you really don't know if they're police.
Chuck Baldwin: I was just going to say, what's a citizen to do? Somebody breaks into their home in the middle of the night dressed in black, sometimes without even having identification visible on them, they just break down the doors with guns pointed. What's a citizen supposed to do? Now if that's a criminal he has every right to defend himself and his family. If it's a policeman he is charged with murder if he successfully defends himself or he's killed if he doesn't. And, yet, how in a split second, in the middle of the night, with unidentified black-jacketed people storming into his house, is he supposed to know?
Joe Hendricks: Right. And we have served drug warrants here in Windsor and in Henry County. We have an organized Narcotics Task Force in the area and we go in uniforms. The first people we send through the door are in uniforms. We pull up in police cars. Lately the tactics by some federal agencies have been to pull up in cattle trailers, which struck me as a little bazaar, pickup trucks, vans, nothing that would distinguish them as being police vehicles.
Chuck Baldwin: Well, I spent a considerable length of time on this program back whenever Waco was taking place giving my analysis of that. I think the whole thing was a travesty. And the thing that really gets me about it is yet today there has not been the first federal agent that has been brought to justice. Innocent women and children, in my opinion, were slaughtered.
But I think there is a greater, not to diminish the importance of those lives, but there is a greater problem here and that is the increasing federalization of law enforcement. The Founding Fathers specifically said that all authority and powers not granted by the Constitution were given to the States and to the people. Law enforcement was not one of those things addressed in the federal Constitution. Therefore, law enforcement, according to the Founding Fathers, was intended to be the purview of the States and local communities.
Joe Hendricks: Right.
Chuck Baldwin: I gues my question is, when do the American people understand that the Constitution is being circumvented and we are traveling down the road toward a national police state? Do other Chiefs of Police and those in law enforcement understand this? Do they see this as you do? Or is there an ignorance among them like there is among so many in the general populace?
Joe Hendricks: Well, the ones I've talked to, Chiefs of Police and street cops both, are generally split about 50-50. There are some that say they welcome federal law enforcement, that the resources and the manpower are a good addition to them. Which I think is fine. We worked with the ATF not too long ago on a man who was illegally selling weapons here in Windsor. The other 50% says that federal law enforcement agencies are just doubling up on state and local laws, that we already have laws on the books that are being enforced by state and local law enforcement authorities. But now those same laws are on the federal level.
Some of them believe, probably 60-70%, that, yes, we are headed toward a national police force. Because in a lot of countries there are national police forces. Russia is a prime example. They have a national police force. Germany has a national police force. You know, a lot of our foreign allies have national police forces. But people have the mentality, "this is America, it could never happen here." But it can! And then I point out to people that in President Clinton's Crime Bill, which was signed into law in 1995, an agent of the FBI could come into any local police department and commandeer that police department. To me that's kind of scary.
Chuck Baldwin: Yeah, that's incredible.
Joe Hendricks: This FBI agent I recently received a visit from- we discussed that and you know he said that that couldn't happen. And I said have you read the Crime Bill? And he says, "Well, no I haven't." And I said it could happen. And he said, "Well, yeah, but do you see what it would take for something like that to happen? I mean things would have to be really bad." And I said right this minute they're talking about the federal government taking over and operating the Washington, D.C. police department. And his reply was, "Well, that's a whole different situation. That's really not a city." And I said, wait a minute. I said it's got a mayor-council form of government, it is a city, it has it's police department. For the federal government to come in and take over the Washington, D.C. police department and to operate it, to me, sets a very scary precedent. You know, my dad always had a saying that I thought was kind of humorous: "You know the nine scariest words in the English language? I'm from the government - I'm here to help you." Like I said in the article, it just leads back to when is enough enoug? When are the American people going to wake up and realize that slowly but surely, not only the individuals' rights but the rights of the states as guaranteed in Article 10, are being whittled away. And maybe not in my lifetime, but probably in my child's lifetime we're going to see a national police force.
Chuck Baldwin: Liberty is a very fragile commodity.
Joe Hendricks: Yes, indeed.
Chuck Baldwin: "Eternal vigilance is its price", Ben Franklin said. And the fact that we have been free is no guarantee that we will be able to maintain freedom. Joe, I believe you, as a Chief of Police are placed in a strategic position. Anyone in law enforcement, especially the head of a local law enforcement agency, occupies a key position. And I want to first of all, before we get too much further and I forget, thank you for speaking out on a program like this and for being willing to share these principles with the people.
Joe Hendricks: Well, I appreciate you having me on the show. I enjoy talking about this thing because, like I say, a lot of people just don't realize it. People need to wake up and get educated.
Chuck Baldwin: Well that brings me to this question. What can "we the people" do? What do you see as the proper role for people in a free society to do in order to maintain their freedom?
Joe Hendricks: I am a strong believer in our political process. I heard a government official in one of those letters we got from ATF saying that the mlitias of this country, particularly the western militias, constituted a threat to our form of government. The greatest threat to our form of government right now is an apathetic, uneducated voting public. That is the threat to our government. If we're going to change the way things are done, if we're going to put this country back on the path of righteousness and justice and equality then the American voting public is going to have to get involved.
You know, we live in the greatest country of the world. We have freedoms that people in other countries can only dream about and we don't take advantage of it. So what can people do, Chuck? People can get up, contact their legislatures, contact their senators, vote, make their opinions known, make their voices heard and we can change things. Now granted, the situation that this country is in did not occur overnight nor will it change overnight. But even ajourney ofa 1,000 miles starts with that first step. And that first step is to get involved, vote, make your voice heard and do something.
Chuck Baldwin: And then we have people like Morris Dees and others who are trying to, in my opinion, pander the market of fear, trying to convince everybody that anyone with a gun, any person who wants to own a gun and anyone who would consider themselves part of a citizen militia is a threat to our government and to our society. What would be your response to that?
Joe Hendricks: Well it's interesting that you should mention Morris Dees. He published a book not too long ago called "Gathering Storms, The Militia Movement in America." I have not had the opportunity to read that book myself. I know some people that have. And my impression from what they tell me is exactly what you say. He is trying to stir up fear of people who own firearms. By perpetuating fear he makes it easier for Sara Brady and Handgun Control, Inc. to force their agenda onto the American people.
Chuck Baldwin: Right. If you could respond to those who would say that anyone with a firearm is an enemy of the state and anybody who wants to be part of a citizen militia is a threat to the America, what would you say?
Joe Hendricks: I would have to say, "Get a life!" This country's independence was won by a citizen militia. What we have right now was won because of citizens who took up their arms and cast off the tyranny of the English king.
Chuck Baldwin: Do you think maybe we have been so far removed as an American culture from tyranny that we've forgotten what it's like?
Joe Hendricks: I think so. We have not been subject to invasion. We have not been subject to a military dictatorship. Americans basically have become lazy and self-satisfied and just too involved in their own things to realize what's going on around them. Until that changes we're going to keep sliding down that path toward a Socialist government and a federal law enforcement agency.
Chuck Baldwin: Thank you very much, Chief Hendricks, for spending this hour with us today and I hope that we can do it again down the road.
Joe Hendricks: Sure thing, Chuck, I'd really enjoy that.
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