FBI In No-Knock Raid on Area 51 Website Operator
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https://web.archive.org/web/20211009062828fw_/https://dlr.th...
If that were the reason, I'd imagine it wouldn't take much effort to compel the operators of Wayback to redact it.
> Does that image reveal anything of note?
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44057/mysterious-aircr...
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-fbis-transformation-from-n...
In the incident that led to Friend’s suspension, the FBI wanted to execute a SWAT raid on a subject who’d been communicating with the Bureau through an attorney and almost certainly would have come in voluntarily. Or, Friend thought, he could have been picked up in another, less dangerous way. The FBI however wanted a show.
“We’re gonna hit this house at six o’clock in the morning and throw flash-bangs and knock the door down and drive a Bearcat up on the front lawn,” recalls Friend, who had extensive SWAT experience and even worked the raid of Michigan militia members suspected of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
He recounts a detail straight out of the movie Idiocracy: the armored Bearcat vehicles the FBI uses in SWAT raids are fitted with special battering-ram-type devices agents call dongers. (No joke. Washington Field Office agents even nickname their Bearcat accessory “DOJ,” for Dong of Justice). Friend describes the lunacy of a federal posse riding into the suburbs to take a door in one of these phallic tanks. “You’re driving down the road with this long extension pole on the front,” he says, laughing. “And I’m thinking, ‘These things were built by the lowest possible bidder.’”
He didn’t laugh so much, however, when he started to get the sense the FBI was opening cases, knocking on doors, and using tactics like SWAT for reasons other than operational necessity.
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Man-who-shot...
They then proceeded to basically cover their eyes and shoot 32 shots while spinning around blindly like Barney Fife, hit Breonna Taylor 6 times as well as firing shots through a random glass door to the patio and miraculously didn't kill or hit anyone else in the apartment complex.
Over a dozen neighbors, including one outside smoking near the incident, interviewed said they never heard the police identify themselves. Only one neighborhood claims to have heard them do so.
"Unconvinced" is right. If they identified themselves they did a piss poor job.
And seriously, why would you ever want to do a "plain clothes" no knock raid?
Because you're serving a warrant on a dangerous suspect, who you have reason to believe has community support? (e.g. someone on the corner who's going to tip the suspect off when the lookout sees the cops rolling up)
Which isn't me justifying the Breonna Taylor raid, which by all accounts appears to have been an end-to-end clusterfuck, compounded with actual lying before and after the raid and a criminally negligent lack of weapons discipline by the officers involved.
That should have never been signed off on.
But there are scenarios where law enforcement are serving warrants on violent people, who if tipped off ahead of time increase the risk to the officers, the suspect, and the community around them.
As with many application-of-force vs freedom scenarios, it's a fuzzy justification line, but there's a line somewhere.
This feels like a contradiction to me. If the suspect is perceived dangerous enough that we need the no knock, surely they are also dangerous enough we need to be prepared for strong, armed resistance right? Body armor, shields etc? All things that are decidedly not 'plain clothes".
I mean if they have that much community support that you are afraid someone will see you coming and tip them off, are you also not afraid that once you've kicked this person's door down you've now got hostiles both inside AND outside?
Presumably not even the police want to be shooting it out in the middle of an apartment complex.
And I guess the general calculus is that even the most aggressive neighborhood bystanders in America are usually less dangerous than a criminal suspect.
But it speaks to the contradiction: the entire point of a no-knock is surprise.
But legal, authorized surprise is practically incompatible with the second amendment (as currently interpreted) and stand your ground laws (as increasingly being passed).
So... that leaves us in the ugliness of reality.
I feel like so much could be improved, both in terms of reducing crime rates and in terms of people actually respecting law enforcement of having a more "friendly" approach. Obviously if there's an imminent threat to life then obviously you expect them to be a bit more heavy handed, but I do feel like there's many things that could be dealt with without resorting to well, this.
That's actually not that unlikely of a take.
ps: I lost 5 IQ points just scrolling down on twitter :(