A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
salon.com
salon.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/01/30/robbery-ring-disguis...
It's not like they're feeding a body into a wood-chipper or anything.
Observe the location in an unmarked police car and wait for the suspect to leave, then enter to acquire the evidence.
No confrontation required.
There is no real urgency that justifies a raid when no one is in any danger of violent harm.
EDIT to address the troll: you can run these off of a car battery and stream it over the cellphone network. Quality will be rather good even then. If you can park a car, you can set up the camera. PTZ, too.
king of non-suspicious behavior
Similar to the vaccination blowback after the Bin Laden raid.
How about real life happens in your story:
- Look outs realize there is an anomalous vehicle staged in the neighborhood & alert the team. How do you not get detected?
- Drug dealers arn't home so they send a child/girlfriend to pickup the stash/cash from the home. Do you arrest and charge the 14 year old son of the dealer?
- Dope boys have children/women runners do the logistical aspects. Arrest the dealer, go in the house and find the stash, the girlfriend claims its hers. Dope boy walks free.
Congrats you have done nothing but charged a 14 year old relative and/or girlfriend of the dealer, alerted the hood that its under surveillance and your target flees to a different zone/state/country.
There are plenty of ways to avoid violence unless absolutely necessary. Instead police want to raise the level of violence and approach every citizen as an enemy combatant. If a cop wants to play military war fighter, then go join the military.
Why would you care if the target flees to another zone/state/country? They're out of your hair and without contacts, they won't be nearly as effective in their objectives.
Since we're talking domestic, they're not nearly as likely to flee to another country or state; people are tied to neighborhoods. Sure, if they're alerted to your surveillance your job gets a lot harder, but that doesn't matter to the innocent.
Crime is down, and police are dangerous. That's the environment we have now. If middle class white people fear the police more than criminals, the police have a problem, and the government has a problem. That prevents them from doing their jobs as well.
>drug offenders are perfectly well adjusted people, just politely knock they will let you in every time. >drug dealers don't flee the state/country when they suspect being watched/followed/pending arrest >I wonder why it's called a "trap house"
I hope that you live in an upper middle class community in California to justify the logic behind your post.
You just don't do it for the pot dealer down the street. Instead, you wait for him to leave and break in to get what you need. Preferably in a way that isn't visible from the street so you can arrest the guy before/after.
If you're looking for a small amount of drugs on a person who you aren't even sure is present in a single room with a whole pile of occupants including children and you start throwing flashbang grenades then you should be 100% culpable.
Stuff like that has no application in regular policing, definitely not in raids to arrest people on suspicion of some small time crime.
If you go after the hold-out of a nest of armed bankrobbers that have been spotted going into some warehouse then you could make a case for it but even then preferably only after they try to shoot their way out.
This is an absolutely ridiculous level of escalation in a residential area.
So it's bad enough they're using military hardware, but then they're not even using it according to proper training.
That is your logic.
The Police get all the "toys" but none of the training, or self control.
Just watch any SWAT raid then compare that to a true military RAID, the Control and restraint used by the military is vastly contrasted by the Uncontrolled and Free Firing of a Police Raid.
The police are very dangerous
Police believe themselves to be at war. Not with one-off groups of armed bank robbers, per se, but with heavily militarized cartels and street gangs like MS-13. If an ordinary police unit knocked on the door of an MS-13 safe house, they'd probably be met with heavily armed resistance.
The problems here are numerous. First, because this was not a cartel safe house, and any degree of diligence sufficient to obtain a no-knock warrant should have made that clear -- which means that either the diligence process is broken, or it was subverted. Second, because very few houses in residential neighborhoods are gang hideouts, and the police are using the theoretical presence of armed gangs as broad, categorical pretext to militarize all of their SOPs, regardless of context, circumstance, degree of escalation, or suspicion of crime. Third, because the level of police militarization in general is growing alarmingly. You'd be hard-pressed to draw a clear distinction, either in armaments or in operational charter, between some of the most heavily armed SWAT teams in this country and small military units.
Stories like this one are not only outrageous; they are horrifying. I don't want to subject myself to recency or memorability bias. But I'd be very curious to see the stats on how many of these incidents are occurring for every SWAT operation that, say, takes down a real bad guy. I'm not in favor of banning SWAT operations altogether, so much as I'm of the strong belief that the "S" in SWAT should always stand for "Special." As in, we've been building a legitimate case for months on this location, and we have extraordinary reason to believe that extraordinary measures are called for.
Such hyperbole makes it harder to understand their position and hence to effect useful change.
That's my suspicion.
Check out this case, which happened in my buddy's neighborhood:
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/01/ryan-frederick-loses-appeal-...
TLDR: No knock raid with officer trying to batter down door, guy inside with small amount of weed who had previously been robbed by armed intruders fires through the door and kills officer.
No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
2) You think the people in this article were "hard drug ring members"?
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/lawsuit-clayton-swat-grenade-ba...
You mean like this guy with "an ounce or less of marijuana"?
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. They aren't being used for "hard drugs" they are being used for "any situation where we might be able to link to someone who uses drugs".
> It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.
Where in here do you see 'hard drug ring'? Or 'hard drugs'?
You:
> I don't think "nonviolent" is a good description of a lot of hard drug rings. They aren't being violent right at the moment, but if they see a cop standing outside the door, they very well might just shoot him. No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
> This seems so disconnected from my comment that I'm not even sure you responded to the right one. Either you mis-replied or you have mentally transformed me into a bizarre caricature of what people who don't completely agree with you must be like.
Funny, I thought that is what your comment was.
I was talking about no knock warrants on nonviolent crimes and you make the false claim I was talking about armed, hard drug criminal organizations. That somehow them being "overused" makes the problem "less real".
I never claimed the problem wasn't real either. I claimed they shouldn't be used in relation to non-violent crimes/criminals in general.
As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
The problem is not that SWAT raids are victimizing an otherwise "probably non-violent" drug world. The problem is that many law-enforcement officers behave in a cowardly way, where the prioritize their well-being over that of the public, so they treat people who are not hardened drug lords as though they were — just in case. That is the big problem.
> As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.h...
Alcohol is more dangerous than all drug related crimes combined to LEO. Not just raids. anything.
Please provide statistical evidence that a drug arrest is more violent/dangerous than other arrests. Please also provide evidence that a large percentage of these arrest involve violent offenders.
And nothing you've said precludes what I said should happen [ search the premise when its unoccupied ].
I'm not sure how that wasn't clear when I explicitly stated it.
Instead of doing this, you continue to make up ridiculous misrepresentations of what I've said.
1. The act being prohibited is nonviolent; injecting heroin, for example, involves zero violence.
2. The prohibition itself creates the violent black market organizations; if heroin were legal, the black market organizations wouldn't exist.
3. Thus yes, nonviolent laws.
There'll still be other drugs to chase after but clearly SOMETHING is changing here.
How is that worse than "they found pot under the floorboards"?
Worst case they get time off with pay while and internal investigation by their friends determine that procedures are followed.
You are trying to come up with technical solutions (oh install sewer traps). The problem is not technical. It legal, and regulatory. There is no, 0, nada, zilch repercussion for just throwing a flash grenade in barge in. Why install sewer traps and spends all that money? That is irrational from their point of view.
The floor boards and all that sewer stuff is just noise. All those "problems" are just a list hurdles they will never and or even think about solving, that was the main point.
However, I am just gathering facts to figure out what other options are available to police. If certain states, as a citizen I am judged very harshly if I don't exhaust all options before using lethal force, even if it's happening in the heat of the moment. I want the cops to do the same consideration of their other options, at least when it's an operation they get to plan out ahead of time to happen under the time of their choosing.
Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happens and not really willing to experiment.
That would be an interesting use for all those seized drugs. I wonder if they do this.
You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine.
At least, you can't afford to.
You could also just rig an external reservoir (or have a full bucket lying around) to rapidly refill the back tank. Though that would of course be fairly incriminating.
Maybe they bust you with less, but they'll still bust you.
Does this apply in criminal trials? If there's evidence I was flushing drugs down the toilet (and such evidence would be there), can the state be allowed to assume I had a lot more of the drug than I really did? What are the policy implications?
A sane person would probably argue that you don't get to run roughshod over people's freedoms just because a particular law is hard to enforce otherwise. But I think that's where it's coming from. You get a pervasive environment where the guys at the top are trying to be tough on drugs and the guys at the bottom keep having to let criminals go because they flushed the evidence, and it's only natural that they'll start to push for more draconian measures.
You could have no-knock raids to capture evidence without needing to stun everybody.
Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyone involved. Think about it- if a law-abiding gun owner was woken up to the sound of unknown men breaking down his door and had time to access her weapon, the situation would be much worse for everyone. There have been many instances of this exact thing happening, often resulting in the death of the raid victims and/or police officers. That is why stun grenades are always the first thing that goes into the building during a no-knock raid.
Tell that to this child and to his parents.
(ie. You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine and a triple-beam down the average toilet in a matter of minutes)
I would think you could - that's the 'brick' size you see in the movies, I would guess you could flush that down in 2-3 flushes as long as it didn't clump up too bad.
P.S. I'm not defending the cops here, just saying, you don't need truck fulls of drugs to be considered "big-time", and they usually get to the bigger fish via the smaller ones.
Not to mention the fact that the penalty for such an amount is on the order of 10 years in prison (of course, that depends on a lot of factors like where you live, how good your lawyer is, etc., but it's quite a large amount of cocaine.)
For example, you can't flush a scale down the toilet.
If we're talking low-level or mid-level dealers, chances are they have a quantity of pre-packaged amounts of their product on hand and maybe even a firearm or two. Unless they can quickly melt-down and/or liquify all of that stuff, it isn't going down any toilet pipe while the homeowner argues with the cops at the door about the status of a warrant.
They (the cops) need something to barter with. You're much more likely to get useful information from someone facing 10+ years than someone facing 1 year (6 months with good behavior) or probation. They want to find everything.
To elaborate on your own example though, pretty sure that even if a firearm is legally registered you can still get in trouble for having it around, especially loaded, in the context of selling illicit substances.
That is almost beside the point, though. How many dealers do you think are using registered firearms to protect their trade? Of that group, how many are registered to the dealer using it and not some random family-member or whatever?
I can't imagine a scenario in which finding a small percentage of the drugs wouldn't hurt the case though. If you can't find it then you can't charge them with possessing it.
In most of the US, and I suspect for most of the population, there is no such thing as registering guns (that would be akin to registering laser printers, especially those high capacity ones).
On the other hand it's illegal for a drug user to possess a firearm, 18 USC § 922(g): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/922
(it's just that the average consumer doesn't know about it)
To the extent there's any tracking of printers, it would at most tell you which store it was sold from, there isn't any required serial number recording done at checkout (well, as of when I last bought a color printer in 2006).
What you're referring to would be akin to comparing a bullet found at the scene of a crime with one fired from a seized weapon, albeit easier; a comparison system. Much less of a privacy concern, without any required "registration" involved.
I'm sceptical. The police don't need to find 1 kg of cocaine, to find a bag with powder in and powder around the toilet should be sufficient.
The penalty for 1 oz and destroying evidence (if they can prove that) is nothing compared to the penalty for 1 kg.
They could actually make some actionable data for public good.
It seems simultaneously safer and more effective than a no knock warrant.
Additionally, the idea of this sort of raid is to arrest anyone who might be involved when they're found to be in a drug house. If you raid an empty house and find drugs, the owner of said house is gonna go underground if he sees his place crawling with cops, and everyone else is gonna steer clear of it.
Finally, there's a time-sensitivity component - the entire premise of drug dealing is that the drugs are in more or less constant motion, so your chances of success go down the longer there is between tipoff and raid.
I'm not saying that I like no-knock warrants or that they're a good idea, I just wanted to offer some reasons when trying to hit the house when nobody's home might be less safe or less effective.
Hmm ... so, you know, do actual police work? Carefully investigate, all that crap? Nah ... easier to move in with both surprise and massively overwhelming force. And if somebody sneezes and a few of the officers' guns go off in response, well, nothing to see here folks, move along.
They lost my vote with the lie about the toddler "losing a tooth".
If someone pulls a knife or even a pistol in Germany, the police will try its best to save even the offenders life - even if it takes hours.
I also find it odd that you included "stand your ground" laws in there. Those laws would actually protect a homeowner using deadly force in opposition to this type of raid in many cases.
I spend a large part of my free time engaged in the online firearms enthusiast community, and I can assure you that no group is more outspokenly opposed to these tactics as we are. The "militarization of police" is such a well-known thing that we have a few memes built around it. "Tacticool" is what we'd probably call these people, and it's something of a running joke that an police officer's professionalism is inversely proportional to the number of cargo pockets the have on their pants.
WRT to Jose Guerena, with the exception of Massachusetts at certain points in the '70s-80s, I don't know of any state that requires or required you to retreat from your own residence. It's unthinkable Arizona would have ever required that.
Finally, I don't see how it helps anything to paint people like us as racists, especially, as LyndsySimon points out, we've been the biggest group fighting for the longest time the tactics that are being discussed here.
I knew about it because my dad was a member of the NRA. The big, bad NRA used to write about police militarization and criminal abuses of force by federal agencies every single month in their member publication, they seemed presciently worried about the encroaching police state two decades before most people. Instead of reporting the same stories of government abuse the NRA aggregated from regional media, the national media painted them as anti-government for calling BATF agents "jack-booted thugs" (because they were) and for saying "in Clinton's administration, if you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens." (because they did, and still do today under two successive administrations.)
SWAT excesses in the "War on Drugs" started in the '70s, there was some back and forth, first encouragement of that, then a reaction to the excesses.
It was Waco, started by the BATF as a "rice bowl raid", that is, a big publicity event prior to asking for more money in the next Federal fiscal year, that really brought this to a head with Dingell, the NRA, gun owners, and other concerned citizens.
Why isn't this headline news across America?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitary
The list of examples (while possibly biased) gives a clear idea of where, having these kinds of miitarised civilian forces, can lead a society.
I see no evidence of this.
In addition to preserving evidence, they are also issue when it's believe there could be an issue of officer safety. (E.g., someone armed & dangerous.)
We need a new policy for instances of excessive use of force by police: if any such is suspected, all officers involved must be immediately suspended, without pay, while an impartial judge, not a police "Internal Affairs Division" (since police officers too often try to "protect their own"), investigates to see whether the claim is justified. If it's not, the officer(s) can be reinstated and given back pay.
If, however, the police did use excessive force:
(1) The officer(s) involved must be criminally indicted and prosecuted for any applicable charges. In this case, it would likely be "premeditated assault with a deadly weapon," and, if, God forbid, that child dies, the charge becomes first-degree murder. If convicted, the officer(s) must then be fired, losing all pension and benefits.
(2) The officer(s) must lose any and all immunity to lawsuit and/or damages under state law, including any "homestead exemption," making it possible for the victims' families to sue them for every penny they have. Yes, leaving them and their families living under a bridge if necessary.
Perhaps knowing that there might be consequences like this will make some of these officers think and double-check their facts before deciding to play G.I. Joe. If they think these rules are too tough, well, they always have an option: They can resign and go work for a living. To paraphrase Super Chicken, "They knew the job was dangerous when they took it."
General question: could the spouse of somebody being sued for every penny they have insulate their risk by divorcing the person being sued and winning some of their assets before the lawsuit was complete?
I'm thinking that if I was being sued, was almost certainly going to lose, and would lose everything, I would want to try divorcing my spouse to ensure that they were able to retain enough of our formerly joint assets to take care of themselves.
I want that officer to consider if, instead of using all his shiny military toys in a flashy no-knock raid, perhaps some old-fashioned police work might work better. Instead of storming the place in search of the suspect, how about just staking it out and waiting until the guy goes out for beer? Instead of charging in with M-16s blazing because the guy might flush drugs down the toilet, how about intercepting the sewer lines from the house and watching in case drugs get flushed out?
But those just require patience and legwork, and you don't get to be all gung-ho with your fancy SWAT gear and your armored vehicles and all that.
1) It's unconstitutional, as a violation of due process, to suspend officers without pay, before they have been adjudicated as having done something wrong.
2) It's probably unconstitutional to impose forfeiture of vested interests as punishment for a crime.
3) Premediated murder requires specific intent to kill. Even if the kid had died, it would most likely be negligent homicide.
4) Removing legal protections for police sounds lovely when you only consider situations like this one, but you forget that for every one instance of something like this, there are dozens of instances of actual bad guys filing meritless lawsuits.
Bullshit. The police can throw me in jail before a trial, preventing me from going to work. How's that not a violation of due process?
>It's probably unconstitutional to impose forfeiture of vested interests as punishment for a crime.
True. You could sue them for enough that they could no longer make the payments on their house, though.
Because the police, over time, have put laws in place to protect their jobs even in the case of severe abuse. Why do you think the POA (Police/"Peace" Officers Association) goes around endorsing/attacking local political candidates?
Consider the shootings in Albuquerque. 26 people killed by ABQ cops in the last few years; and not a single officer held accountable. Even when there's unambiguous police video of abuse!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/06/20/albuquerqu...
The amount of process due is largely determined by case law, with judges using a balancing test that balances several factors.
Most to the point in your hypo, one of the factors is the government interest involved.
The government has a much stronger interest in detaining a possible flight risk and processing you through the criminal system than in suspending an officer's pay before some sort of notice and a hearing is given.
Police officers can be flight risks. One of the "riders" from Oakland is still at large.
The government isn't actually required to provide 'due processes' unless someone is being deprived of their life or livlihood.
That is to say, I don't believe employees of any stripe (government included) need to go through criminal processing before being suspended or fired.
More so, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure what the specifics of 'due process' are. Simply, any non-arbitrary written policy can be considered a due processes. Its' how boarder guards can get away with harassing people when they step out of line at the TSA.
[1] An at-will employee will not have a property interest, but a government employee with a contract will.
- Who benefits from a war on drugs?
1. prison industrial complex - guard unions, vendors for food, uniforms
2. drug cartels - controlling supply like DeBeers does with diamonds
3. drug enforcement agencies (see above)
4. fear mongers - anyone who uses fear as an argument in debate over immigration, gun rights/control, war
- Why does this work?
Some citizens do not recognize that it is happening, some don't know how change it, some are too busy trying to survive.
- Why dont people know that stuff?
Lack of critical thinking skills, logic, applied math.
- Why?
Our schools are segregated by race and wealth. Our curriculum is geared towards testing instead of teaching. Our teachers are poor. Our students are hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and always tired and hungry.
Conclusion: The root cause is that our system of governance has been allowed to become corrupt due to a largely uneducated and poor citizenry.
We are one of the most prosperous nations in the history of humanity.
Why are we poor and uneducated?
Honest question: I'm walking past the somebody's house with an assault grenade in my hand. I feel miserable and I throw the grenade into the window. 5 people die. Is that negligence? I didn't know whose house is it, is there any people there, etc.
Then figure out whether the jury is going to believe that you didn't intend to harm anybody when you threw a grenade into a house.
I actually ignored the jury factor, my fault. When police officers brutally kill someone they're still "our" guys, good guys.
This is almost certainly not true, especially with modern executive interpretations that 'due process' in the law simply means any established process. Do you have any references for this?
"Three factors are relevant in determining what process is constitutionally due: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the Government's interest." See Mathews v. Eldridge.
Here's one case[1] I found in which the Supreme Court appears to allow an officer to be suspended without pay, but due to his having been charged with a felony. In such a case, the government's interest in suspension without pay is greater, and from skimming the opinion, it appears that a significant factor was that a grand jury found probable cause to indict the officer.
[1] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/520/924/case.html
http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/03/holder-due-process-d...
>"Three factors are relevant in determining what process is constitutionally due: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the Government's interest."
These are impossibly vague and open-ended. That's actually my only point. What I'd like to see is a case where the Supreme Court said that a policeman could not be suspended without pay, decided on constitutional grounds.
For example, there are seminal court cases that lawyers know in which 1) a person has their welfare benefits revoked, 2) a person has their disability benefits revoked, 3) a tenured public university professor is fired, and by knowing those cases, you gain an understanding how most courts would likely view the suspension of pay of an officer with no notice or hearing of any kind. Different facts will obviously change the results, and different courts may come to different conclusions, but the current test and existing case law is not impossibly vague or unworkable.
Due Process does not require a courtroom. That does not mean that "any established process" will suffice. The amount of process due depends on the context. The open-endedness of the concept is embedded in the phrase itself: the word "due" means "warranted" or "appropriate."
I don't think there's a Supreme Court case specifically involving police officers, but the general idea that public employees have protections against suspension is well-established: http://www.huizenga.nova.edu/course-materials/6240/cases/Con....
Nope, not unconstitutional, not even close. The constitution has literally nothing to say about suspending someone's ability to work due to arrests and legal proceedings, because it's not a set of guidelines for prosecution, it's a foundation for lawmakers and the judicial system by which to form and judge laws and crimes.
> 2) It's probably unconstitutional to impose forfeiture of vested interests as punishment for a crime.
Assets are frozen during criminal proceedings all the time. Ironically, especially for drug-related prosecutions (big ones, albeit, and for good reason).
> 4) Removing legal protections for police sounds lovely when you only consider situations like this one, but you forget that for every one instance of something like this, there are dozens of instances of actual bad guys filing meritless lawsuits.
TOTALLY. Luckily, we have the magical judicial system, which is built to handle cases, you know, individual instances where the law is either broken or does not provide enough clarity, and thus, case trial can help to narrow the meaning of laws. They can also award compensatory and punitive damages, which seem more than justified in this particular instance.
(2) A public pension is a public trust. Why should someone who has violated that trust be allowed to keep any interest in it?
(3) Those officers intended to use the force they did when they stormed that residence. That's premeditation. Even if I concede that point, though, negligent homicide still carries a hefty prison sentence.
(4) Giving those legal protections to police has given them the attitude that they are "above the law." This needs to be changed. Big time.
I gave up hope after the same local cops who have long been notorious for shooting everybody [1](2001) got off scot-free for contriving a raid of a local mayor, intimidating his mother in-law, shooting his dogs and unapologetically quipping about it [2](2008).
1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/nation/investig...
"By any measure, Prince George's County police have shot and killed people at rates that exceed those of nearly any other large police force in the nation."
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor'...
"The event gained national and international media attention. While the Calvos were cleared of wrongdoing, the police were accused by the Calvos and civil rights groups of lacking a proper search warrant, excessive force, and failure to conduct a proper background investigation of the home being raided. Despite the criticisms, no action has been taken against the officers or their respective police departments. In August 2010, Sheriff Jackson stated that "we'd do it again. Tonight."[1]"
If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make since hazards are part of the job they have chosen to perform. Using SWAT teams externalizes the risk and danger of the job.
IMHO, it should be a high bar to meet to justify the use of SWAT teams in any situation. A judge should have to sign off on the use based on extraordinary evidence justifying why such excessive force is need. Once a warrant is acquired, do police have carte blanche to exercise it as they see fit?
It should come back on the judge that he or she authorized this abuse of power. Unfortunately, the feedback loop between the (hypothetical) judicial backstop on the system and the enforcers of the law tends to be left open by ignorance.
It would be good for local political activists in Atlanta to make sure that the judge who authorized this warrant has a significantly curtailed career.
I would hope that signing off on a warrant requires more rigor than a mere signature.
How adversarial is the warrant granting process. Is it common for warrants asked for to be granted by default, or is there an adversarial process in place that forces the police/detectives to go back and do more investigative work if they don't provide enough substantive evidence to justify a warrant being granted.
Furthermore, is warrant-granting by judges a matter of the public record. i.e. Can I go somewhere to lookup how many warrants a particular judge has granted, how many they have denied, and how many that were denied were eventually granted and the average number of resubmissions required to get those that were initially denied approved?
Sometimes you make a bad choice based on circumstances that were partially outside of your control. An elected judge being overthrown for that reason may make their successor either more willing to question or less willing to take the police's evidence as sufficient.
You're right -it was appallingly easy for them to decide that they can do as they please.
Given the prison/police/military industrial complex fueling our massive, unprecedented in world history, Third Estate and the utter lack of any meaningful political opposition to it, things will get worse before they get better.
All of this military surplus gear thats been avalanching into local PDs nationwide isn't going to just collect dust. The good ol' boys in blue will eventually find a reason to use their toys, whether its on you, me, or the family in the OP.
Since 'Protect and Serve' has been officially declared false by our wonderful Supreme Court, everyone in this country should disabuse themselves of the notion that the police are here to help us and keep the peace.
BRB blasting NWA
ADD: The government is SUPPOSE to protect and serve the people.
Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. As in this case where apparently there was an AK47 in the house.
That certainly happens. According to http://www.odmp.org/search/year, 30 American police officers were killed by gunfire (not-accidental) in 2013. However, like most things, what's more important is how often it occurs. It turns out that there's somewhere between 750,000-800,000 police officers in the USA, so on the high end, that's 4 gunfire-related deaths per 100,000 officers.
Compare that to jobs like fishing (127 per 100,000), roofing (34 per 100,000), and farming (26 per 100,000) (source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dan...), being shot to death as a police officer doesn't seem especially likely. (Admittedly, gunfire-related deaths don't represent a majority of officer deaths in a given year, it seems, but gunfire is the main justification behind police militarization)
Edit: To put it another way, being a police officer is 2.5 times safer (gunfire-wise, at least), than driving a car.
The point is that trying to arrest a drug dealer who has an assault rifle provides more potential for being shot than trying to arrest one that does not. To mitigate the chance of being seriously injured the police tool up in order that they might, if not strike before they are hurt, respond with appropriate force to a violent attempt to evade arrest.
http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/police-state/th...
But so too are these kinds of reactions from the police. Its really as if the public are caught in the middle of two horrific forces, being created on both ends of the playing field. The question is: who profits? The cold hard answer, which nobody wants to admit is this: the dealers of drugs, and the dealers of weapons. Oftentimes, the same damn groups.
Cops profit. Lawyers profit. DAs profit. Tough-on-crime politicians profit. Religions profit. Government profits. Political parties profit.
Basically, the whole establishment profits from maintaining status quo in the drug war.
More info: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...
Well, here's the most relevant quote, anyways:
"""
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.
Mr Balko contends that these forfeiture laws are “unfair on a very basic level”. They “disproportionately affect low-income people” and provide a perverse incentive for police to focus on drug-related crimes, which “come with a potential kickback to the police department”, rather than rape and murder investigations, which do not. They also provide an incentive to arrest suspected drug-dealers inside their houses, which can be seized, and to bust stash houses after most of their drugs have been sold, when police can seize the cash.
"""
This is really my main concern with the "war on drugs". Keeping the drug trade illegal doesn't get rid of it - rather, it just pushes it underground. The result is organised crime, violence, and so many other major problems.
Admittedly, I'm very far removed from the situation, but I find it difficult to imagine that there'd be so much of these problems if you could just walk into a store and buy your drug of choice in the same way that you buy cigarettes or alcohol. You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics.
However, they are starting to get into the trade of fake food.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-c...
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gan...
https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758...
Should the SWAT team be able to toss a flashbang into your child's crib because you have a dime bag in the nightstand?
I have a pretty good understanding of race and the 'war on drugs.'
[0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the...
Why the 88, by the way? I hope it isn't to do with that angry Chaplin lookalike. Is just when combined with silver and a comment saying that race has nothing to do with the drug war in the US, I can't help but get suspicious. Apologies for the godwinning if it is just the year you were born, or something.
Meth didn't exist when the war on drugs started, it is an after the fact explanation. You've been taught that the war on drugs is equal opportunity. Propaganda is built on lies and dis-information. The individuals crafting policies who actually believe that propaganda eventually craft disaster and failure, like a geneticist who doesn't believe in evolution.
As far as I can tell, they care less about pot. With the exception of massive amounts of pot, they care mostly about everything else. Small amounts of pot are virtually decriminalized in much of the US, but not small amounts of other scheduled substances (I knew a [white] guy in college who went to jail during a routine traffic stop for possession of one 10 mg pill of dexmethylphenidate (a.k.a. Foculin) without a prescription -- $1500 bail).
I'm not saying police don't do racial profiling, just that the War on Drugs is not about holding a race war; it's primarily about money.
But there's nowhere near as much money coming from seizure as is coming from the government to fund the manpower and equipment used to do the seizing.
The enforcement divisions of the DOJ seize less than 2B annually. (That's FBI/DEA/ATF/etc combined.) Their combined budget is ~27B.
Seizure (and prosecution in general) is more a problem due to perverse incentive schemes: Police are incentivized to seize money not so much to have the money directly, but to have those seizures show up on their performance reviews. Not unlike prosecutors trying to rack up convictions or traffic cops trying to fill ticket quotas.
The Drug War is much more about race.
Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present.
Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods.
This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.
It's not Switzerland, so you can't compare.
Unless we want to agree that spending $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $30,000 equates to the same education as $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $200,000.
I find that hard to believe. It can't be that hard to actually shut down distribution networks with the amount of resources the government uses. But if you just focus on the parts of the network near to the end user, you can burn a lot more resources and argue that you should be given even more resources. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they actively protect or support the major distribution networks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffic...
We need to stop the demented practice of selling surplus military equipment to local police departments. We're not saving money. Cops don't need armored cars, drones, grenades, etc.
They already sold the equipment to the federal government. The federal government is simply getting rid of stuff they don't want. If anything, this practice hurts them by flooding the market with used goods.
The thing is, we're prohibited by law from buying them at the moment.
This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:
http://pokerati.com/2010/11/poker-raid-in-south-carolina-1-p...
None of these poker game players were "guys with long raps sheets". In fact, most of them had no prior criminal record.
I know of numerous other SWAT raids for other white collar crimes like campaign finance violations but I don't have time to dig them all up now.
Finally, SWAT raids are routinely carried out on "suburban pot dealers". Here's one from a few months ago:
http://marlborough.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/swat-t...
Just Google "pot dealer" and SWAT and you'll find tons of other examples.
http://www.scnow.com/news/local/article_3506ee8e-1bce-11e3-b...
Well, it's also about violent dancing and parking.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t...
When SWAT raids are SOP, violent dancers and babies are going to get hurt. But at least the cops are winning.
Given the opportunity to wear body armor and carry a rifle when confronting a perceived threat, many will take it.
There is a reason that burglary is dangerous: it invites a confrontation that doesn't have to exist.
I'm not so starry-eyed as to imagine that the cops never need to enter a house forcefully. But they can make this happen at a time and means of their choosing. They can watch to determine how many people are in the house. They can wait for some suspects to leave and detain them individually.
It's easy for me to second-guess from here. But the time to think through all these things is before you go into the house.
My comments speculate upon the mindset of those involved in these raids regarding their choice of weapons and gear. They know they are going into a house, that much is given.
1. Officer wants to return home no matter what. 2. He/she decides to use as much firepower as possible to achieve that - 50 cal guns, military grade armor, armored cards, explosives, grenades, rockets, whatever. 3. I have a risk of getting caught in the situation like this. I live in bad neighborhood, my brother sells weed, I had police encounters in the past, whatever. 4. I want to stay home alive. 5. What should I do to achieve #4 if police decided on the escalation of firepower? Logically I can conclude anything besides having thicker armor and higher caliber weaponry?
If someone declares war on you and not poised to take prisoners and determined to kill, what should you do?
If you do (5), then the police simply bring that shiny new MRAP they got from the DoD and park it in your yard and turn on some spotlights. Then they get on the loudspeaker and have you come out with your hands up. If you fire up your heavy weaponry to oppose them, then you will surely fail to maintain (4).
Remember, this whole thing got started because the police thought they might face armed resistance. If you have a nice paper trail of armor and high caliber weapons leading to your door, then the police will simply bring the proper amount of firepower to assure their success. So, I disagree that escalation of arms gets you anything in the long run regarding this SWAT business.
But they're serving a warrant, and we still have due process (or at least some shred of it), so these SWAT teams are going after suspects.
[1] EDIT: Many more are killed in vehicular accidents.
Background: it's long been known that law enforcement officers (LEOs) are _safer_ on the job than non-LEOs. Only an unfortunate few die in violent encounters with the criminal elements. When LEOs scream about how dangerous their job is, they're almost always asking for a pay raise.
Nonetheless, there was a time in the not-so-remote past when LEOs _consciously__accepted_ the possibility that they might die or be injured on the job. That attitude is fast disappearing.
Once one accepts the analogy that "battling crime" (where any "enemy" is poorly defined; those are civilians out there) is equivalent to warfare (where the enemy is well-defined and no quarter given), then one can almost unconsciously accept a "better him than me" attitude where the civilians' lives are, relative to LEO's, worthless.
The creeping acceptance of warfare's "better him than me" attitude by LEOs and police departments is the root of the problem.
Like the rest who must escape to reality on a daily basis, I rather have a) My gun with me, and b) A cop by my side.
FWIW I live inside a very large US city, am familiar with firearms and have worked in law enforcement for many years.
And now for something supported by the numbers: have you considered the likelihood that the cop by your side shares his/her bed with someone else?
The past 4 years seem anomalous - compare the previous four years:
2010 - 19 2009 - 12 2008 - 22 2007 - 16
Much as I'd like to think Obama has single-handedly reformed all of the police departments in the US, I think it rather more likely there's something wrong with the data.
These raids are a problem, yes, but in a thread with a European commenting that they think this represents America, your link doesn't really support the argument that this is true.
The previous comment was referring to the raids in general (at least how I read it). And those are actually not all that uncommon.
Just because people don't die very often doesn't mean they're reasonable. Pointing rifles at innocent people practically indiscriminately ("wrong place, wrong time, now STFU citizen"), not letting parents attend to their scared and/or wounded children... there's just no justification for that.
It doesn't make it safer for suspects. It doesn't make it safer for police. It's certainly not safer for bystanders.
I'm not the sort to evoke "our fore-fathers", but I seriously doubt a militarized police force who could raid citizen's homes without notice is something they would approve of.
Turns out they had the address of the apartment correct minus the street. He was at 3033 X, they wanted 3033 Y. They realized this about a half hour into the raid and said "oops, sorry," and simply packed up and left. His story is not in that map. I looked.
Another time, I left my apartment to walk to the convenience store across the street and was immediately met with six Springfield (OR) Police officers with weapons drawn and pointed directly at my center mass. I was ordered to kneel, not move, and provide identification, conflicting orders with which I was afraid to comply due to itchy triggers in my face; they ended up pushing my face into the sidewalk and taking the identification themselves. They thought I was a car thief they had been chasing.
The fun part of the second story is that they found my press credentials in my wallet first (this was when I worked in television) and a lieutenant magically appeared, apologized extensively, and offered me a bottle of water. She also called a bus to come treat the laceration on my forehead, and gave me her card and said if I had any problems, call her first, and we needn't make a big deal out of this, right? Just a misunderstanding, no big deal.
Police get it wrong a lot. Just because it's not near you doesn't mean it's not happening, believe me.
This happens with surprising frequency from what I hear. I know of a couple people with almost the same story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281972%29
[Yes, it was a long time ago, but I don't think anything about our society here in the UK has changed to such an extent that would make this fundamentally impossible.]
Actually, on the that subject I'm not particularly worried about a general level of violence by police in the UK. However, I am concerned that we could see something like the Troubles again if we continue to treat immigrant populations as scapegoats for all the ills in our society.
"What happened on 17 October 1961 and in the following days against the peaceful demonstrators, on which no weapons were found, morally forces us to bring our testimony and to alert public opinion... All guilty people must be punished. The punishment must be extended to all of the responsible people, those who give orders, those who feign of letting it happen, whatever their high office may be.."
reminds me of the coroner at the inquest for the Bloody Sunday victims, himself a former Army officer:
"They were shooting innocent people. These people may have been taking part in a march that was banned but that does not justify the troops coming in and firing live rounds indiscriminately. I would say without hesitation that it was sheer, unadulterated murder. It was murder."
It was an unfortunate coincidence at a point in time of aggressive soldiers, civil disobedience, no-go-areas and the presence of armed PIRA units.
For the next 30 years of 'troubles' there was never an action like that again by regular army forces, despite constant provocation and attacks against them.
The SWAT / armed police raids, on the other hand, are occurring every day in the USA.
Anyway, us Americans manage to normally live our lives because stuff like this is rare. Remember: if you see it on the news, it is not common pretty much by definition.
I'm far more worried about being run over by a truck or my house burning down than I am about being shot by the police. That's not to say that it's not a problem. This is a huge problem that needs fixing, like, now. But it doesn't directly affect my ability to live life without fear.
Re: Europe — http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/25/world/europe/eu-elections/ etc.
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elinadav-heymann/sudden-rise-o...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEKr_sDUPTE&list=UUZaT_X_mc0...
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1MYMVfyHi0&list=UUZaT_X_mc0...
This is truly awful, but the vast majority of Americans will never be subject to a SWAT raid or anything like it (especially if they're not involved in illegal activity). Or terrorist attacks. Or mass shootings. Or etc etc.
People are notoriously bad at estimating the probability rare but extreme events will happen to them.
Of course, that doesn't make this ok. I personally believe SWAT team usage should be restricted to hostage, active shooter, and similar situations.
While that's true, it's somewhat beside the point. US citizens are far more likely to be a on the receiving end of a SWAT raid or a victim of murder than citizens of other countries at a comparable level of development. The fact that it's only a minority of the population doesn't mean there isn't a serious issue.
To put some numbers on it, the US annual murder rate is ~5 people per 100k population. Yes, it's small, but compare that to 1.0 in the UK, 1.1 in Australia, 1.6 in Canada (0.4 in my country), and clearly it's a more dangerous place.
There are estimated to be ~50-80k US SWAT raids per year annually. Of those in Maryland for example:
- half are for non-violent "part-II" crimes
- a third resulted in no arrests
- >1% resulted in an officer's weapon being fired
I didn't know those SWAT stats prior to today and I find them shocking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/s...
Yes, people are known to underestimate the likelihood of such events happening to them relative to others.
Given that you read stories about SWAT raiding the wrong residence because they misread the house number, it made worried that the same could happen to me.
Picture proof: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/AqKIhXOCIAEaG9D.jpg:large
I was shocked what I saw next and I was thinking to myself "What have I done?!". I'm in a high-rise and have a good view of the city. It looked like they sent the entire police force. Police vehicles were flying in from every angle, SUVs jumping over curbs, driving through lawns, etc. It looked like a scene from the original Die Hard. I was nervous they would trace down my cell # if it turned out to be nothing.
I think that's how they get away with it politically. For the politically powerful and even most of the middle class, it's only something they see on the news occasionally.
I think this is a topic where the legal fight is ramping up. These stories are becoming too common and though currently "legal" it just reeks of negligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabinieri http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Gendarmerie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijkswacht (until 2001) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_Civil
That said, this is another article on the story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stu... According to CNN, the offender had sold meth to an informant "a few hours earlier" at the house and had a previous felony weapons charge. Their target is a meth dealer who brings a gun to the table.
Given that information, it seems less crazy to think that a law enforcement team would feel that weapons and aggressive entry were the safest option to prevent a gunfight.
They got it wrong. They entered a civilian home in the same way a US military operative would enter a war zone. They focused on the one target, the one objective, the one outcome and forgot about children. They forgot this is America and we believe in protecting the rule of law and we also believe in protecting innocent children.
But put yourself in their position. If your job is to protect against the propagation of methamphetamine and you have a target who they believe has a weapon, would you knock?
Edit: wording
Their job is fundamentally to protect and serve the public. If they and, more appropriately, the organizations they are a part of myopically equate that to preventing meth dealing while avoiding even the slightest chance of police harm, even at the cost of innocent lives, that's a problem and can and should be held against them.
Yes, if I were in their shoes, I would not want to knock. Which is why we need to make it a legal requirement to. Don't give them a choice.
The police are playing an inherently rigged game. They operate with one hand tied behind their back, giving criminals an inherent advantage because criminals, by definition, don't worry about following the law. The only reason this works is because the police can bring to bear vastly greater resources and numbers, but their possible actions are much more limited.
And that's how it should be. The term for a place where the police have no limits on what they can do to bring in the bad guys is called a "police state".
I don't doubt that police really really want to handle situations like this with quick and decisive action. Which is exactly why they must not be allowed to.
I'm not trying to be "that condescending dick" and I sympathize with what you're saying, I'm just saying I disagree with "put yourself in their position".
Of course this is a sad story, no one should ever get hurt by drug violence, let alone a defenseless baby. But i think we should not rush our opinions on these things.
It's easy to get all emotional and be all upset when we read these things.
But we are supposed to be intellectuals right? We should not make judgements based on one sensationalist article. We can do better than that.
I think we should all just act a bit more rational. Don't make snap judgements. Read more about a subject before you condemn people.
In the end, i don't care what YOU think is the truth. Just make sure you know what you're talking about before you shout out your opinions.
PS: iambateman, this is not really meant for you of course ;)
People will probably misinterpret my post. In no way i mean to say that police and government don't share any blame. I'm definitely against the militarization of police. But i won't be sending money to that family either.
The number of places and the absurdity of the manner in which you can get killed, hurt, jailed, or have your entire life irrecoverably change is just frightening.
Now, I don't intend to be Anti-American, I already accepted that there is a possibility that this sort of thing gets reported more for the US. Also, I know that one can claim that I am generalizing and this doesn't happen all the time, all over the place.
However, I've read so many news reports[1] of simple things like frivolous lawsuits that completely damage a persons life to completely avoidable instances of serious life altering events like this news story which makes me wonder why would a professional making a decent living (like say a software engineer) would want to move to America. I personally, am not too inclined.
[1] I have often thought about creating a site that aggregates such horror stories to serve as a warning -- a mirror, lets say ...or if you really want me to spell it out -- a reminder, that, 'No, American is not the greatest country in the world'. Before you decide to downvote and retort, read the article (again) and empathize with me, if you can, how this sort of thing would invoke such a reaction.
Even the worst part of the worst city in the USA could not be more different than a war-stricken area of Iraq or any other region where military action is a common occurrence (other than that they probably contain more friendlies than enemies).
Aside: It is truly sickening that they used a flashbang on a residential house where they hoped to apprehend a single, low-value suspect that could not possibly have been that well armed. Again, lack of proper training.
Like many of the commenters here, this article fills me with outrage. Even given the possibility/probability (as mentioned by iambateman) that the target of the SWAT team was guilty of meth pushing, armed, and dangerous.
What can an individual do to effect change? The executive branch seem to be nigh-invulnerable these days. Checks and balances don't work when it's the enforcement arm who need to be kept in check.
Is there something productive I and others can do rather than sitting here powerless in anger?
They sell drugs because it makes money. Legalize drugs and they'll make money some other illegal and dangerous way.
There are other countries and other states in the USA that have legalized certain drugs, have they had a comparative rise in other illegal and dangerous activity like you have claimed?
Or are you just hypothesizing one possible outcome that has no evidence or bearing on reality, "whatsoever".
The cigarette companies have been used for years for killing people. Imagine he amount of people using for ods.
Tort reform would also be need for this to ever work.
Obviously, the taxpayer is footing the bill for this, but total spending reduces (through the reduction in drug related crime).
End of war of drugs would just re-channel the same tactic against other targets.
2. The "Executive Branch" of Obama honestly has nothing to do with this. Understanding where you place your efforts is important. You can try and make this a national issue, but it isn't one.
3. Recognize that state departments and local police are going to do things you don't like, especially when you're far away and hold no control over them.
The US has a federal system. Its the power we've given to local officials to run localities the way they like. Now, if we are to make this a national issue, we'll have to pass something in Congress as a nation... something that seems very unlikely given the gridlock on the national law system at the moment.
The author did not specify, but the news article linked below suggests that the "SWAT team" was composed of a mixture of town and county officers. I'm not sure what the jurisdictional situation is, but if it were me I would try to contact the mayor of Cornelia first and, if that did not address my concerns, the governor of Georgia.
But maybe there's a better way. For instance (as has been discussed elsewhere in these comments) if no-knock warrants were declared unconstitutional, or if there was a well-defined process for redress of unjustified force complaints, perhaps the situation would improve for everyone.
For the case of Georga / Cornelia... I really don't know. And unfortunately, its simply "their State, their problem".
On the national scale, I'd assume that the FBI can be pulled in to prosecute Georgia / Cornelia.
http://www.fbi.gov/minneapolis/press-releases/2014/former-po...
Remember: the FBI is the "watchers who watch the watchers". They can sue, prosecute, and arrest local police officers, and their national judicial system is entirely independent of a local municipality's judicial system. (Its unlikely that a local cop can play buddy-buddy with a national judge)
I would bet that there's a good case for "excessive force" here.
Short term? 1/2 meter thick concrete walls and doors, barred windows. Though that might set off alarms for the police, so a better solution would be a bunker space under your house where you sleep and spend your time indoors. Of course also have a bedroom above ground so you can claim you slept in your bunker because you were working late on a project that day and they just caught. When they knock, put on riot gear. I mean, your welder suit.
Or maybe it would be safest to get sent to prison for life, at least there the most danger you have to look out for is getting stabbed by someone doing it for fun, rather than blown up by a guy doing it for the good of society.
With that terminology comes the behavior. And this behavior is 'self-improving'. The Police already has access to that gear of the military, which is left over from the real wars. That gear is more likely being used along with war tactics. Self protection and the appliance of gear and tactics became more important than to protect the civilians and even to protect the criminals from them self.
The Cato institute has worked with journalist Radley Balko (who is the expert in this area) to produce a map of botched SWAT raids: http://www.cato.org/raidmap
I really see no other course for citizens other than to start attending public meetings and speaking up whenever public figures spout truisms about the safety of law enforcement officers being top priority. It's not top priority, that's why they get paid the big bucks - to put the safety of law-abiding citizens above their own.
ftfy
America is dominated by cults of violence, cults of death. Its military-industrial groups do nothing but produce death and destruction at the press of a button, and yet Americans do nothing about it.
This problem won't go away until the real issue is address: the utter lack of humility in your average public, and dire amounts of arrogance in the ruling elite. It is pure and utter know-best that makes this irreversible. Until people accept the humility for change, it doesn't happen...
Legalizing drugs would make all the violence go away over night, and let us spend the money directly on the social problems drugs cause (which obviously haven't been reduced in the least be criminalization).
What that suggests is that the raids are the results of authories in some areas not knowing what they're doing while authorities in other areas do.
It seems dangerous in two ways. Both that most of these tips are probably for completely innocent people who may now be subject to extreme levels of violence with no justification, and that once in a while, one of them might be for something much worse than they thought, putting the officers themselves in a lot of unnecessary danger because they didn't do any investigation.
That's a really bad map. "Botched" is such an arbitrary term and it doesn't capture the way a perfectly executed raid will often damage lives. ("we only terrorized their kids! standard procedure.")
The data is pretty obviously woefully incomplete. Does anyone actually believe that that there have been only 13 "unnecessary raids on doctors or sick people" in the last 30 years? Those are the ones the author knows about. It's an infographic that hides as much as it reveals.
Complaints are something they just ignore. Settlements hurt.
If this was some national security incident where the nephew was about to activate a nuclear weapon this sort of force might be justified. That it was for drugs is the most disturbing part. How does that help anyone in any capacity?
Atlanta, small for a "big" city and with a terribly low budget relative to its size set its 2014 budget at 550M. A few million dollar wrongful death/abuse settlements each year don't even get noticed.
It helps police departments keep their budgets and continues their access to militarization programs (where the DoD gives them surplus equipment after combat operations).
There is no excuse whatsoever for what happened.
...the taxpayers. But probably just a few dollars per individual per year, so not enough to cause enough outrage to change things.
Sometimes the only way to get change is to make it painful to not change.
One incident will not be enough, but if this becomes epidemic and they're spending $50M a year on lawsuits...
However, the problem is systemic. I don't see a change without major adjustments to the law which would be highly unpopular, eg mandatory life sentences for crimes committed by police officers or similarly draconian measures.
But sure, let's run with your assumption.
"The problem is that certainty of punishment is difficult to achieve"
"X is hard, therefore Y," without establishing that Y is worthwhile, is a piece of reasoning responsible for many ills. Yes, it's a cost-benefit thing, but bear the following points in mind:
When you have (X * Y) in general, and X >> Y, you can make a much bigger difference with a small change to Y than a big change to X (unless it's an exceptionally big change to X).
Costs of long term imprisonment scales with the medical needs of the people we're imprisoning, which is much faster than linear.
Draconian sentencing means we're doing harm to the those we falsely convict (which will inevitably be above zero); this means increasing the risk to innocent officers, which lowers the quality of officers we can recruit.
"especially where co-offenders have a strong incentive to back each other up - in this case, groups of police officers :-("
This is a tremendous issue, for sure, but it is one that needs to be resolved for a whole host of reasons, of which this is only one.
Note that a more draconian sentence reinforces this - if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting sent up for life, I'm more concerned (and therefore, presumably, more willing to stretch the truth) than if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting a slap on the wrist - so if I'm mistaken about my buddy's innocence, raising X might actually decrease Y. (Actually, that holds even if I think my buddy is guilty of something that doesn't deserve so stiff a penalty...)
Unfortunately South Africa's police force has also learned from the USA, as have others I see. Granted a Swat team is necessary sometimes, but overall the Police force is just becoming more indimidatory and inhumane. It's a bad trend, and a real threat to civil society.
In Mexico the narco terrorists pulled innocent people off of a bus and made them pit fight to the death for their amusement.
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-crook...
In the middle ages they would impale you on a spike so that you died slowly over days.
In Rwanda one tribe butchered 5 million people of another tribe with machetes.
An that's just examples I can think of off the top of my head.
And you have trouble believing that a few cops wouldn't let a mother comfort her child?
For example, there was a story where a school aged child was suspended for using his hand as a gun and aiming it at other children. I just couldn't comprehend the idea that a principal would think that action justified suspending a child. Perhaps a detention and a stern warning, maybe.
I want to believe that journalists will leave out part of the stories that explains the harsh actions, that makes you say "Ok, I can understand why the principal did that", but when more and more of these stories are published, it becomes harder to believe.
Until recently America had child labor and would lynch black people. A FEDERAL judge in my hometown of New Orleans is famous for saying "We like to try our niggers before we hang them".
Human nature is human nature.
We live in a 'veneer' of civilization.
Underneath are still the same old animal instincts honed over millions of years of evolution.
Don't ever forget that. Or forget it at your peril.
Yes, they are all members of the same species. "Humanity" is a thin veneer over the top of a very selfish, very violent animal.
United States law enforcement included, as described in the article.
It's a very, very sad state of affairs when you have to compare a developed country to undeveloped ones.
Every police officer on active duty right now begin their career with the idea they are to protect their citizens. This doesn't seem like the case in the original article. To me it sounds like people that have lost the intent of their job.
Granted, there is a chance this one incident might be fake (who knows with the internet), but incidents like this are definitely real. The fact of the matter is, people are not evil, but the organization of people tend to be. What can you do about it? Probably the best thing is stop strengthening centralized organizations, live/work in a small tightly knit communities, and don't lump others into a group. If that's not possible, your next best alternative is not be black / hispanic / south-east asian / male.
These are humans who decided, probably at a young age, that they wanted to do this sort of thing for a living. They then deliberately pursued training for this sort of thing, and got hired to do this sort of thing. Their livelihood likely depends on them continuing to do this sort of thing. It shouldn't be surprising that these people do this sort of thing. What else are they going to do?
After, even though the police had the drugs in their hands when they found it in the mail, the chief said, "We′ve apologized for the incident, but we will never apologize for taking drugs off our streets....Quite frankly, we′d do it again."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor'...
The second section, really the last 1/3rd of the book, is a series of essays and articles, more op-ed than factual history. This is where Radley Balko's libertarian streak comes out full-bore, and it moves from semi-scholarly work to libertarian polemic. It's fine, of course, it's his book and he's entitled to write what he likes, but there's a lot of anti-government rhetoric and anti-social policy language in there that I found offputting.
In addition, throughout the book, the police are described in aggressive terms, they're always "threatening" or "menacing" or "assaulting" - while the people being arrested are "cowering", "hiding", "pleading".
It seems like it would be hard to know exactly in many cases what everyone was doing, and instead Balko is putting his emotional slant on what was happening. Then, in the second section of the book, he freely admits that he started tracking and writing about when dogs were killed during SWAT raids because it got a much more impassioned response from readers.
None of this removes the value of the book, which as I said was excellent. But I think I would have appreciated a little more nuance in some of the tone.
I'm starting to think we need a Constitutional amendment that prohibits the outlawing of drugs. Something like --
The right of access to drugs of all kinds shall not be infringed.
Congress shall have the power to regulate and tax drugs, but may not
ban a drug outright.
The intent of the phrase "right of access" is that people should have the right to obtain a drug if they can afford it; my intent is not to create any obligation on the part of the government to make it affordable, and certainly not to provide it for free.
The intent of the phrase "drugs of all kinds" is to include any substance someone may wish to ingest, inhale, or inject, for any purpose, medical, recreational, or otherwise.
The intent of "Congress shall have the power to regulate" is that I think the FDA should continue to enforce purity and labelling requirements.
It would be nice to find wording to clarify that intoxication does not relieve one of responsibility for any act committed while intoxicated.
I know, it's hard to imagine such a thing passing anytime in the next 50 years. But it's not too soon to start talking about it :-)
Not in my experience, but I have no trouble believing that has much to do with my social circles.
>>> Police go in armed to the teeth in part because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that there's a high probability of the people inside being similarly armed. <<<
It's a classic arms race. Yes, the police should stop encouraging further escalation. So should others.
What's the incidence of things like this in the rest of the world?
By "disconnect" I mean secessio plebis - either physical with a move out of $this_jurisdiction, or economic, when a person minimizes their participation in the economy of $this_jurisdiction.
By continuing to use money of $this_central_bank for selling and buying goods and services in $this_jurisdiction, a person sends the following message to the legislators and enforcers:
"No matter what I say, here's my money. Let it be the token of my willingness to take more abuse. If I did not like how things work, I wouldn't be supporting your pyramid."
PS The main reward of government employess is neither money, nor vacation, nor pension, nor social perks, but immunity. It's getting away with holes in babies that makes the job attractive precisely to the people who like to make holes in others.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
Makes you wonder if we really should be militarizing them.
The thing that always amazes me about this is the unbelievable incompetence of our administrators. They keep doing things that don't work and expect them to work.
The unofficial motto: "If violence isn't doing the job, you're not using enough."
There is always a way for them to escape from the charges.
NO. Militarization et al are just symptoms. The deeper disease is the "War on drugs". Until we end the latest failed attempt at prohibition (and even deeper stop declaring "wars" on things (and even deeper become a rehabilitation/support society rather than punishment/control society)) we will suffer continuing collateral damage (erosion of rights, brutality, being a prison state, etc)
When you find a police department that fits this definition, please let us all know. I'm skeptical it's even a possibility.
I think making sure police have some skin in the game, instead of pursuing the illusory chase of perfect security for them, is the answer. It's supposed to be public service, after all.
This is also the us (cops) versus "them" (non-cops) mentality and will lead to even more violent standoffs because situations like this will further lead non-cops to view cops no longer as "the good guys" which will lead the cops to view the...
> Jose Guerena was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and was killed in his Tucson, Arizona home, on May 5, 2011, by officers of the Pima County SWAT team, while they were executing a warrant to search his home in relation to an ongoing investigation into drug smuggling.
Maybe they should requisition some of those unused cold war nuclear warheads from the military. THAT should take care of the problem. So... just how far are we willing to take this madness hmmm?
There was a story I saw yesterday about police shooting a 95yr old WW2 veteran in his own home because he didn't want to leave and was brandishing a knife. They were bean bag rounds but they shot him 6 times from close range and he died.
now i'm gonna stay home. At least no one is gonna fire a flash nade at me
And system failure.
@everyone
Did you vote for the 2 party dictatorship?
Are you going to vote for it again?
You are aren't you?
It reminds me of the time a guy told me about how he hated cops and that, just the week before, he was just walking down the street, a squad car pulled over, the cops got out and beat him up. He wasn't doing anything but walking down the street!
I am positive there is a side of this story not being told.
2. The suspect was later arrested for dealing meth. This isn't a little dime bag situation as the clearly biased writer would have you believe.
3. This isn't the suspect's first arrest, he was arrested before for distribution. Police found an AK-47 in his house.
Here are things that could have been done to prevent this situation. 1. The homeowner could have not dealt meth. 2. The parents could have not moved in with their AK-47 owning, meth dealing nephew.
Here are some likely other outcomes even if the SWAT raid didn't occur: 1. One of homeowner's guns could have accidentally discharged and killed the child. 2. Criminals could have robbed the house (a higher likelihood when you are running a drug ring out of your house) and killed the child.
That poor child's situation is a direct product of irresponsible parenting. There was a reason the police were at this house. Their tactics and the damage they did would have not been remotely possible if this guy wasn't armed with illegal weaponry and dealing drugs.
This isn't reddit. America is not out to get you. Don't be a criminal and don't associate with criminals and this doesn't happen to you.
Signs point to this guy not storing the rifle in a safe fashion, however.
This is HN, so remember to get the polish out before you commence with the bootlicking.
1. The suspect is the nephew. 2. The nephew is not the home owner. 3. The home owner wasn't the one dealing meth. 4. The nephew/suspect wasn't present at the home at the time.
That said, your comment is off. The suspect is not the father of the child as it appears they were visiting the suspects house.
It must be nice to never associate with criminals. For many poor families, this is not an option as the only uncle who will let you stay for free with him after your house burns down, just happens to sell some meth on the side. Is one grenaded baby worth finding even 100lbs of meth? Not to me. It's certainly not worth mauling a baby to find no drugs.
Does it matter if the meth might be causing far more pain to more people?
This https://www.google.com/search?q=mother+on+meth+kills+child gives a lot of pretty stark reading material.
In my question I'm asking if a simplistic comparative harm analysis would perhaps weigh in favour of non-terminal injury to an infant. It's a very difficult question, of course, and a true analysis couldn't be so simplistic (what proportion of those 900k doses would get replaced by alternate supplies for example). But raising the question seems valid.
> Don't be a criminal and don't associate with criminals and this doesn't happen to you.
Ok, but how far does this 'association' go? Where is your line where the excessive police response isn't justified. We can already see that your line is past throwing grenades at children. What's next? SWAT team mows down a preschool with gunfire because a drug dealer was picking up their kid at the time?