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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we should be asking why they are so eager to break down other people's doors, instead of harassing them for not breaking down just this one.

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A lawyer in the article asks that very question. Many of their clients have had their front door bashed in without the FBI ever considering the aesthetics of that. If the FBI is concerned about such aesthetics, maybe it should extend that concern to all houses, and not just those in rich neighbourhoods.

I believe there's evidence that property damage in a neighbourhood can lead to more crime ("broken windows"), so avoiding visible property damage in vulnerable neighbourhoods actually sounds like a good idea.

At the same time, for a sense of justice and equality, it can also be important for people to see that rich people are held accountable for their crimes just like poor people are. So maybe they should only bash in doors in rich neighbourhoods and not in poor neighbourhoods.

Point of data for you–broken windows theory of crime and policing has been widely debunked. Here's one source of many: https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-univer...

Or perhaps the FBI should be congratulated here for having some respect for property that isn't theirs and it's the cops in literally every other case who should be castigated and punished.

I get why the outrage is here, but we seem to be in a race to the bottom. Instead of getting cops not to kick in front doors, make sure they do it to rich people too? Or maybe I've lost the plot.

The very same people who are pointing out this were complaining about aggressive police tactic for years. It is not instead.

So why not use the same tactics for both, rich and poor?

Or is violence reserved for poorer people?

Usually some rich old guy won't shoot at cops, when they come knocking at the door. Those people use lawyers, not guns.

"No Knock" usually implies that they don't announce that they are police before they kick the door down.

I'm not sure I could confidently say that a rich person is less likely to draw a gun when someone kicks their door down in the middle of the night.

Maybe they are more likely to have a panic room, or just long corridors that provide enough time for the situation to become clear before they have a gun held in their face by someone claiming to be the FBI.

I mean... let's be real... a rich person will answer the knock, follow the police peacefully to the police car, and the only thing they'll say and do is "i want my lawyer"

White collar criminals shredding documents and wiping hard drives is not unknown.

The purpose of a no knock raid is, in theory at least, to stop people destroying evidence. They only incidentally turn into shootouts, that's not what they're intended for.

In modern times.... with hard drive encryption by default, and mostly paperless work, any sort of criminal, who can afford a house like that, doesn't need to run into the office, and start the shredder, while the police are knocking on the door.

They wont be shooting, they are probably busy shredding all the financial documents.

That they keep at home? And a shredder fast enough, that the police most break down the door without knocking?

Statistically, they don't prosecute wealthy people much to start with.

Wealthy people also do less violent crime, and use the many loopholes instead of directly stealing or doing other crime. Even if they get caught, they usually just get summoned to court by mail, and most of them don't need a swat team because they're not violent.

There was an interview with the Cops (tv show) producers, where they asked them why they show mostly black and poor white guys on the show, and not some white collar workers... and they said something along the lines of "get me a middle manager, that'll tear his shirt off and start fighting the police, and we'll record that"... Arrest of rich people usually go along the lines of the rich person saying "i want my lawyer" and pecefully following the police to the station.

Define violence.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/ferrero-says-knew...

Things like this are violence too.

The rich most of the time don't go to jail and if it's a different kind of jail. So they don't fight the police because they know it would make jail time more likely.

If they would have the same jail risk as the poor they would fight and run like the poor.

Statistically, there is not much wealthy people.

There are easily enough to law enforcement attention disparities

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Well, I mean, I think that _is_ kind of the point. Clearly breaking down doors willy-nilly is undesirable, and potentially dangerous, so they'd really want to be making the case that it is _necessary_. The claim by the police here that the overriding concern was the affluentness of the area would tend to undermine that.

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