Paramilitary police: Cops or soldiers?
economist.com
economist.com
> Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly claim was the proceeds of a crime. Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime. If the police find drugs in his house, they can take his cash and possibly the house, too. He must sue to get them back.
> Many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their budgets. In 1986, its first year of operation, the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund held $93.7m. By 2012, that and the related Seized Asset Deposit Fund held nearly $6 billion.
Proliferation of SWAT team setups may have been due to a perception issue, but they sure as hell are kept going because there is a real financial incentive. For that reason the answer to the article's title should probably be something like: "Neither. Try mercenaries."
Isn't this true in general, and not only when SWAT is deployed to arrest the suspect?
> Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime.
I would have thought this to be contrary to the US constitution, since it clearly breaks the presumption of innocence, but it turns out that it doesn't feature in the US constitution explicitly, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence
Take the "right to bear arms" for example, which is clearly stated that it applies to citizen militias (something important at the time it was written). Through tons of applied sophistry it was decided that it also means the right for every redneck to buy military grade automatic weapons for "self-protection"...
If I remember correctly, the legal limit is 0.02 for underage people, to account for mouthwash etc.
Only to those with fundamental failures in English comprehension, which does not include the Supremes, who in Heller agreed 9-0 that it's an individual right.
And the Federal courts have been implacably hostile to "assault weapons"/civilian semi-auto assault rifles and the like (full auto has been covered elsewhere in this subtread; I'll just add there are about 200K legal ones out there, and two known crimes committed with them, one by a police officer). Not a single favorable opinion prior to Heller, and none that I can remember after it.
Try again.
And to the previous poster I'll add that production of AR15-pattern rifles and carbines alone for the commercial market averages about 380K units per year since 2008. Adding in non-AR pattern "military style" rifles brings that number to about 480K per year, or about 20% of all rifles produced and sold commercially in the U.S. The AR15 is undoubtedly the most popular rifle in the U.S. and that includes a hell of a lot of folks who can't reasonably be classified as "rednecks."
Quoting production and sales numbers isn't likely to help with them, except to possibly scare them away from trying to pass gun grabbing laws that will result in massive resistance and/or civil war. We're holding our breath right now with Connecticut, which was surprisingly quite pro-gun in practice pre-Sandy Hook and which, due to passive resistance, has now created an estimated 300K felons, with the usual suspects calling for all of them to be prosecuted.
And a cherry on the top with Connecticut State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance telling a newly made subject of the state, after she said "You're the servant, we're the master", that "I'm the master, ma'am. I'm the master"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxjuz2o9Gk; jump to the end).
I don't think these people understand the forces they putting into play.
The problem with HN comments is not just new users who do not know that the expectation is of colleagues discussing a problem to work to a solution, but also of long standing accounts that allow themselves to be "trolled" by emotive subjects.
Some people should stay away from gun control; abortion; Israel / Palestine; vi vs emacs; etc etc.
It'd be great to see some research on online communities where approaches to this have been tried.
Or you know, to those that can understand history, and know exactly the context under which it was said, plus they know that when the justification is no longer there, the "right" is not meaningful either.
That would be news to a whole lot of people. In terms of effective self-defense we're now to the point that if Peruta v County of San Diego is not struck down by a 9th Circuit en banc hearing or the Supremes, 90% of the US population will live in "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes. Did you miss the nationwide sweep of this, in the modern period starting with Florida in 1987 and ending with Wisconsin and Iowa in 2010, with the courts forcing Illinois (which is now mailing out thousands of permits), and now California and Hawaii? (Sucks to be on the East Coast, Maryland and New York I think cert denied by the Supremes, New Jersey and Massachusetts cases still pending. Add the ones where it's not an issue, that's all of the Federal Appeals circuits!)
Those of us with a detailed knowledge of the relevant history know the dependent militia clause was a sop thrown to those who feared standing armies and e.g. "select militias", which are exactly what our modern police have become. They lost because e.g. George Washington, who had very detailed knowledge of the merits of militiamen and regulars, said "no way".
Might as well mention the U.K. since some of our correspondents hail from there: as I understand it, effective self-defense, that is, using a disparity of force, was judicially nullified in the '50s, and was enshrined in law in the '60s or '70s (this is what the recent "have-a-go" stuff is about). I doubt any of you have lived in a time when you could effectively defend yourself, and therefore the concept could be quite alien to you.
It was only Churchill going slightly paranoid and OTT post ww1 that lead to restrictions in the UK.
* Fairly active insurgency in Ireland for much of the 20th century.
But particularly: * A school shooting, after which pistols were pretty much banned.
Post ww2 we always had strict rules but tragedy's make for bad laws passed in haste one down side to not having a written constitution
The first statement is not at all a limitation of the second, but is rather a justification of the second. I agree that there needs to be gun control, but it should be done through a constitutional amendment, rather than by a misinterpretation of what is currently there.
n. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
n. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
n. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.
"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/311)
Following that, the unorganized militia are the above minus those in the National Guard or the Naval Militia. Per modern interpretation of Federal law, this now probably includes women.
But the flip side is that attitudes today would not say that a woman "taking up arms" like men do is illegitimate. See, e.g., the one law that failed in the recent Colorado gun grabbing batch, that would have banned concealed carry at public colleges (note the minimum age for a licence is 21).
Women did not like being told they weren't fit to carry to defend themselves against rape and made a compelling case. Evie Hudak, the woman legislator who took point on the opposite side, had to resign so that she wouldn't be recalled like two previous state senators, replaced with a Republican, and flip control of the state senate.
Its not sophistry because others interpret things differently than you would like. And saying 'military grade' is silly; might as well say 'commercial grade'. What, should people only own badly-made pistols and rifles? That'd be very hazardous.
I'm in the UK and I find the US obsession with owning guns weird yet I find your post inflamatory and unconstructive.
Why not skip the pseudo-politeness and just leap the "compensating for small penis" attacks?
I am anti gun, pro gun control. I down voted your comment because it added no value to the discussion, it was purely inflammatory, and certainly had no data to support it.
You may wish to re-read your posts in this thread.
I invite you to reread this thread and determine who derailed an enlightening discussion regarding the psychology of US gun ownership and police militarization with ad hominmen and completely off-topic attacks on another's commenting style.
I just did and it appears to be you. You are making 2 kinds of comments in this thread: 1) inflammatory comments that appear to be deliberately written to cause a derailing flamewar, and 2) comments accusing everyone else of making inflammatory comments written to cause a derailing flamewar.
I suppose you dismiss those people as obviously insecure though...
Secondly, your statement shows a lack of appreciation for the heterogeneity of crime rates and public safety quality/availability in U.S.
Oddly enough, those rednecks you mock are more likely one of the most responsible groups who do collect guns. Inner city youths and those backed by the drug trade are the real problem.
Yet people are more than willing to pass laws to make acts that are illegal even more illegal without fixing the underlying problems; namely the drug war.
But do armed citizens really still think they can defy an out of control state? Didn't that line of thinking die with Waco?
They have demonstrated that if enough of the population disagrees with the notions of government and are provisionally armed, they can prevent a permanent change in control.
So at some level there is validation of the idea that an individual right to bear arms is a check on totalitarianism. I hope we don't ever have to test that idea of course.
Heck, even the first day of Waco supports the point, the BATF goons came in shooting (by their own admission they started first) and were repelled. A lot more than 4 would have been killed (note, some were own goals) if the Branch Dividians hadn't ceased fire when they retreated. It has been noted since then to not make that mistake....
Also think about acceptable costs to the foot soldiers, so to speak. Take the Connecticut example I mention elsewhere: how many officers would die trying to take away the guns of 300K civilians before they'd mutiny? What small fraction of point defenses taking an officer's life would be sufficient for that?
There's an apropos Solzhenitsyn quote from The GULAG Archipelago that also speaks to the very different cultural DNA we have:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?
After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
Waco could have easily happened 150 years prior and had a similar outcome; fundamentally a small group cannot resist the power of the state in a head-to-head confrontation. It's only a popular uprising that can put real pressure on the power of the state. If a group of people in one place resort to violence, the state can crush them, but as with terrorism, you cannot wage war against an idea, unless the idea is held only by completely powerless people.
The meaning of "prove" in this case is the far more permissive "preponderance of the evidence" standard. But of course you already know that. You are lying by admission.
I think civil forfeiture is a bad idea because it is ripe for abuse. But its underpinnings are not "legal sophistry" nor are they unconstitutional. I stress the distinction because its useful to understand that not every bad idea is unjustifiable or unconstitutional.
Agreed that many bad ideas have some plausible justifications.
In that case, preponderance seems reasonable.
Small note though: I think the $100 ($93.7) to $6B was an increase in seized assets.
"Freebooters" may be a more appropriate term
On the other hand, if we use the second paragraph's description: "... are irregular soldiers who act without authority from their own government, and are generally motivated by financial gain, political ideology, or the thrill of adventure." -- We get something that has only partial overlap with mercenaries or privateers. I still don't see how the term applies in this case. "Without authority" is a pretty steep accusation.
Maybe I'm missing some cultural context.
Oddly enough, I was under the impression that a large part of the American population protested loudly whenever their tax dollars are spent for "useless" reasons. Do the complaints only apply when it's the Federal government doing it?
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120326/NEWS07/703269971
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local-cops-...
(Each article discusses a grant from the Department of Homeland Security being used to purchase a vehicle)
Which is probably part of the problem, an average citizen can't do much more than whine to their Congressperson about this sort of spending.
Nashua police purchased a BearCat with drug forfeiture money in 2003. (from your second link)
Or the town could have about 4.5 more teachers. I think the only way we will ever stop this madness is to put into clear terms what we are giving up.
Sure, the tank thing might make the town "safer," but is it is really worth cutting 4.5 teachers at YOUR kids school to pay for it?
Summary of the case: cops wanted to use a neighbor's house to surveil their suspects. The neighbor who owned the house reacted about as would be expected.
http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=69016...
> One had a criminal history that included three assault charges
There is a new tactic for intruders to use: announce themselves as police officers.
Really. That's not a way to raid a house due to "allegedly" buying things with a stolen credit card.
Is that illegal?
"Show me a man, and I will show you what he is guilty off" - old communist saying.
A quick check of a reference indicates that as usual, it wouldn't be difficult for it to be illegal to carry outside your home. There also may be felon in possession laws with knives like there are with guns.
Current SWAT teams are just bunch of happy triggers and robbers.