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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

This was the result of a no-knock warrant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-knock_warrant, which allows police to enter a home without prior warning, on the theory that giving notice will allow people inside to destroy evidence. They are almost uniquely a product of the drug war. One can imagine very few situations outside of drugs were evidence could be so easily destroyed as to justify a no-knock warrant.

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It's a really stupid theory. Destroying evidence is just another charge to throw on and doesn't really suggest any risk of violence. Though sure, if they flush in time maybe the police lose out. But it hardly seems worth it. It ought to be possible to serve warrant without instigating a violent encounter. And it's not like the risk of destruction of evidence is anything new. You could easily destroy evidence well before the US was even founded. Might have been even easier, historically. Burn it, throw it in a river, etc. No-knock aggression should be reserved for situations where there's a very very strong expectation of violent resistance and that's it.

Also in general the severity of the charge is directly proportional to the quantity of drugs. So if the quantity is instantly flushable, how serious of a charge can it have been, and thus how much accidental damage is acceptable in the arrest?

What is involved in blocking the sewer line coming from a house? Is it even possible? (short of a back-hoe)

It probably depends on the design of the sewer system, but an ex's father worked for the city sewer system. He was asked by police on one occasion to help out with a bust where they thought evidence was going to be flushed.

From their point of view what is easier throw a flash grenade into a crib or build sewer shut-off valves through-out the city. Control them, repair them. Can you prove that these drugs belonged to this particular house. That this one person flushed them. What if they are 10 people in the house. Are they all drug dealers because they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?

"they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?"

How is that worse than "they found pot under the floorboards"?

It is not worse, it is still easier to throw a flash grenade in a crib.

Worst case they get time off with pay while and internal investigation by their friends determine that procedures are followed.

This doesn't feel like a coherent response to my comment.

That is their response. It is not coherent, but this is not propositional logic. This is a militarized force that cannot be punished for their abuses, can and does inflict those abuses as will and it attracts saddists and psychopaths that cover each other asses.

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.

They may not care, but the rest of us do.

The point is that there's nothing you can do. You are not the one making the choice. Hence the only solution is to restrain the police.

Sure, but my point goes to whether proposing sewer traps (or something similar) instead is an appropriate way of restraining the police.

I appreciate that my thought pattern (asking about sewer traps) sure sounds a lot like a clueless nerd using his technology hammer to fix a social problem he figures must be a nail.

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.

Wanting the cops to do the same consideration of their other options is the regulatory and legal issue rdtsc was talking about. You want the cops to do that, you have to impose penalties that will actually be enforced on the cops, and the penalties have to be harsh.

The penalties will have to be sufficient that the EV of breaking the rules is negative, but harshness should only be one tool in achieving that. It is more important that the penalties be inforced, and harshness can actually undermine that.

Some substances are extremely valuable per unit volume. Especially prohibited ones.

OK, so, to the best of my knowledge, 1 kg of cocaine is worth about $20K. Assuming cocaine has roughly the density of baking soda, this amount ought to be easily disposable in a single flush. So you could flush $100K worth of coke down a toilet in under a minute.

Seems optimistic to me. If you flush in rapid succession the reservoir has to fill again. I guess that a good flush requires, depending on circumstances, 20s of refilling. That would lower the throughput significantly. Also, the suspect has to move the cocaine from hiding to the toilet. Sure, $20K is a lot of money but were not talking Pablo Escobar-like quantities here.

Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happens and not really willing to experiment.

"not really willing to experiment."

That would be an interesting use for all those seized drugs. I wonder if they do this.

Cocaine is far more water soluble than baking soda. Extremely, extremely water soluble -- about 2 grams of cocaine can dissolve in 1 ml of water (compare to baking soda: About .1 grams per ml of water)

You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine.

"You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine."

At least, you can't afford to.

But you also have to get rid of the packaging. I was imagining dumping a package of cocaine, but that's stupid: at least opening the packaging would help with the clogging by letting the cocaine dissolve. Not sure what the packaging would do with the pipes and whether this only packaging holds up as evidence.

@Bootvis

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.

Imagine pushing 5kg worth of cocaine down a toilet while, most likely, incredibly strung out on said cocaine, with the SWAT team beating on your door. Couple that with the fact that they likely aren't stored in easy to open bags designed for pouring and what you're looking at is a bathroom full cocaine and a seriously clogged toilet. You've got to get rid of the plastic too, remember.

Maybe they bust you with less, but they'll still bust you.

If I am required to maintain documents in a civil case, and I destroy them, generally the other side is allowed to assume they were as bad as possible.

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?

Surely such a flush would leave residue on the bowl that would be easily detectable by a forensics kit.

No, it takes at least two flushes.

I think the problem is that it's really hard to police recreational quantities of chemicals. Physical evidence related to crimes is usually either bulkier objects which you can't just put down the toilet, or documents which do take some time to destroy and often exist in multiple places.

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 can't even be sure the people performing these "no knock warrants" aren't cops/former cops faking it to commit crimes against you:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/01/30/robbery-ring-disguis...

Exactly. This story sounds like a violent raid by a gang of thugs. What about all those Americans that own weapons in order to defend themselves and their homes? If you're allowed to shoot a stranger violently entering your home, doesn't that mean it's totally legal to shoot those cops? Don't they have to identify themselves as cops and present that warrant first? How else can you tell the difference between the cops and a well-equipped gang?

The risk of some evidence being destroyed versus potentially killing a kid (and in this case 'luckily' only wounding that kid) seems to be an easy choice. To protect and serve and all that.

Not exactly minor wounds. Life threatening and life changing injuries. Even if he survives, his parents are going to spend the rest of their lives dealing with the aftermath.

Why isn't this headline news across America?

And what about the life long hospital bills?

I don't agree, the grenade that was thrown is not part of no-knock, it's because of the extreme violence that gang style criminals are apt to use.

You could have no-knock raids to capture evidence without needing to stun everybody.

It's technically possible, but in practice that's never how it works. The entire purpose behind no-knock is to take them by surprise before they can even think about resisting. They use immediately overwhelming "non-lethal" force so that they never have to escalate to a "lethal" level. Obviously the definitions of these terms are imprecise at best.

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.

What if, you know, they did knock, then the law-abiding gun owner would come and open the door, like in most of the civilized world. Or take them when they are out, wait for them to get home, etc. There are numerous ways to make an arrest without going all commando.

Parent said this is the safest way to do no-knock. Everyone in this thread agrees that no-knock is a bad idea most of the time (at least), and clearly in this case. Up thread, there was question of the particular tactics in conducting the no-knock entry.

> Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyone involved.

Tell that to this child and to his parents.

I said safest, not safe. I'm not trying to defend no-knock raids; I believe them to be immoral, dangerous, and unconstitutional. I was merely trying to explain why these tactics are used.

Unfortunately there are several stories floating around where the law abiding gun owner was at the far end of the house and had enough time to get a gun out and fire through the door at the calamity coming forth. Which has frequently lead to the death and/or life time conviction of said law abiding gun owner. This might be ok if it weren't for the frequency with which these law abiding gun owners had their homes mistakenly raided.

So, a bunch of armed men breaching a door and rushing into a house is less likely to provoke such a response? No knock entry is dangerous, period. It should only be used where threat of violent opposition is well established. Once you're going in no-knock, the notion that flashbangs is the safest way sounds plausible.

Yes, it is true that the most efficient way to oppress people is to do it with maximum available force and brutality, such that they are utterly unable to resist.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to observe the house for a while before a raid? That's where you pick up on clues as to who lives there. "Hmmm, seems to be a lot of small children here and not too many gang style criminals. Ok, team, we go in fast, but force probably won't be necessary." Oh, wait. This type of thinking would probably prevent the no-knock raid to begin with.

Not to mention you'd have to be a pretty low-level drug offender to be able to destroy enough/all of the evidence in the time "not knocking" saves the police.

(ie. You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine and a triple-beam down the average toilet in a matter of minutes)

>> You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine 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.

Easy solution. Turn off the water to the house and they'll get one flush, two at the most.

That is way too logical and cost-effective. Plus then they wouldn't get to use the cool-as-shit flashbangs that their dept got on the cheap.

I posted this above as well, but cocaine is extremely water soluble -- 2 grams per ml of water will dissolve, or a little over 20 times the solubility of baking soda. Even with a low-flow modern 1.28 gallon toilet, it certainly wouldn't "clump up" -- more like instantly disintegrate.

You could easily flush a couple of kilos of cocaine. Owning a couple kilos of coke makes you a fairly successful mid-level dealer who must know people higher up on the food chain.

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.

I edited my example to make it a little better. Point being: If you are a big enough dealer to be useful to the police in a larger investigation (or to warrant SWAT team "no-knocking" at your door), you probably have quite a bit of related evidence that would not fit down a toilet.

Except that simply not true. Do you know how much a kilo of coke costs? We're talking ~20k USD. You could easily flush that, and low level street guys don't have kilos lying around, not even close. If you have access to that kind of quantity you know people who are pretty high up.

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.)

Sorry, I think you're missing my point that is even if somehow they could flush the entire amount of the illicit substance in time, they probably have other items on hand that would be just as good from an evidence perspective.

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.

A scale with a bit of powder on it does not demand 10+ years in prison. A gun, if registered (and it's not like all dealers have illegal guns) carries no penalty in and of itself.

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.

Now you're onto something! Your first point is true. If the suspect manages to dispose of even some of the substance, that could hurt the case. Or it may not. There's lots of factors, I was just giving the simplest example I could think of (trying to flush a sufficiently large amount of cocaine).

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?

You'rd right; I can't speak intelligently on the number of dealers using illegal firearms. It's about not leaving it up to chance though. They may know, to a relatively high degree of confidence, that the drugs are there, but they may know little else. You don't want to raid a home and come up empty handed.

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.

Registered???

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

I meant "legally owned".

Interesting choice of example, as it happens there is in fact a "printer registry", where documents can be traced back to the device that produced them: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

(it's just that the average consumer doesn't know about it)

There's a much tighter serial number system used for guns, all the way to a BATF Form 4473 (https://www.atf.gov/files/forms/download/atf-f-4473-1.pdf) that's required for the first retail sale.

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.

Really? So you could cut open whatever's holding it, throw all the powder in the toilet (1 kg will be more than 1 flush also), dispose of the bag, clean the knife/scissors and there be no trace?

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.

How is it sufficient? Sufficient for what? Do you think that their end goal is to get a charge, any charge, on this mid level dealer? Of course not; they want information on someone even more high level.

The penalty for 1 oz and destroying evidence (if they can prove that) is nothing compared to the penalty for 1 kg.

This may sound silly, but it seems like there could be a MythBusters episode specifically on this to prove or disprove how likely these no-knock raids are needed to prevent an effective coverup of evidence.

They could actually make some actionable data for public good.

Well, anecdotally, I've been in a house full of drugs when the cops showed up, and those drugs were gone before the cops stepped foot in the house. Yes, I had a not-so-optimal childhood.

Were they serving a warrant, or just asking questions and eventually invited in?

We had a small party (only about eight people or so) and a couple of us got loud in the backyard. The neighbors called the cops and, where I lived, they were coming in, warrant or no warrant. We knew that, so down the toilet it went.

Interesting. Where was this, and what kind of interaction preceded their entry (if you recall)?

Rockton IL, population (at the time) ~3,000. They knocked, we knew who it was, we ran/dumped. I didn't stick around to see them at the door.

Could you share how this was accomplished?

We chucked most down the toilet, some people ate some.

How hard is it to just wait until the suspected dealer leaves the house, and then use the warrant?

It seems simultaneously safer and more effective than a no knock warrant.

Fairly hard actually - you've got to stakeout the house without being detected and tail the guy when he leaves. Plus you may not know how many folks were in the house in the first place (and thus how many are still there when the main guy leaves) - you could wind up raiding a house full of awake and semi-alert criminals with guns and have a bloodbath on your hands.

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.

It's not my responsibility to give up my rights to make the police safe. They exist in balance and this is not the balance I accept.

you've got to stakeout the house without being detected and tail the guy when he leaves

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".

One interesting thing is how long it will take to get rid of these sorts of things once the war on (some) drugs ends.

What makes you think it will ever end?

Nothing lasts forever. See Entropy.

I don't really think entropy is relevant to the war on drugs...

Well, it is, but not at the scales we care about.

Does entropy last forever?

Marijuana is legalized for recreational use in two states, and for medical use in twenty-three (including those two recreational states). It's also decriminalized in six more. The national government is starting to talk about rescheduling it as well.

There'll still be other drugs to chase after but clearly SOMETHING is changing here.

It's fully legalized here in Uruguay, and the sky hasn't fallen yet.

General optimism, hoping that certain culture wars (the 60s) will age out generationally, some positive evidence from countries with harm reduction focuses (Portugal).

One wonders--if the evidence is so easily destroyed, how great could the crime actually be?

It's not like they're feeding a body into a wood-chipper or anything.

It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.

Non-violent crimes turn into violent standoffs when the police routinely respond to them with aggressive raids. This is completely a product of escalation between the illegal gangs and the 'legal' gang.

Yes. A non-swat approach is pretty simple:

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.

You don't even need to have a cop in the unmarked car. You can have a remotely viewable camera that the desk-duty cop watches from the precinct headquarters.

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.

"don't mind me poor 100% black community im just here from ADT to install this randomly hallarious HD camera and wireless antenna facing this decrepit house"

king of non-suspicious behavior

The typical utility company truck (gas, electricity, water) can be parked outside and someone could install any number of objects that contain cameras/microphones, but don't look like one. Resorting to an obvious strawman does nothing.

That would be dangerous for the utility company employees, because this tactic would quickly become known, and all utility vehicles and employees would then be viewed with hostility and suspicion by criminals and other residents.

Similar to the vaccination blowback after the Bin Laden raid.

Having built them for the ATF, there are concealable cameras that mount to light poles and run off grid power. There are also concealable cameras that look like fire hydrants, high voltage signs, rocks, and cars that are designed to feed the video back wirelessly and be rapidly deployable.

Even easier: wait for the suspect to leave the house, arrest him, then go do a leisurely search without having to worry about the suspect being violent.

LOOOL

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.

Huh? If you have evidence for a warrant on a supposedly dangerous dealer you don't need to catch them with drugs. Simply wait them out for when they leave their house and pick them up then.

Did you know that a search warrant is not the same as an arrest warrant?

The original comment mentioned arresting someone. If they want to search the house then wait till it is mostly empty. Presumably to get the warrant they have at least a modicum of surveillance? Maybe made and undercover buy or 2?

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.

It would seem that if you have enough probably cause to go into the suspect's family's house with an armed and armored SWAT team tossing grenades, then you would have enough probably cause to simply arrest him and bring him down to the station. It's also much more civilized that way.

Instead, why don't you attack the house where his child and girlfriend/grandma are sleeping? Is that a better solution? Doesn't that turn the town/neighborhood/village against you? Kill someone's kid and they'll never trust anyone that looks like you again; they'll probably try to kill you if they can, and they definitely won't help you with information. Neither will their friends or relatives.

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.

ITT: people who have never been in law enforcement or military service.

>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.

No?

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.

This swat team just committed a violent crime.

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.

I just watched a brief youtube video on flashbang grenade training [0]. Apparently, the grenades aren't even supposed to be thrown into the room, they're only supposed to be thrown into the doorway. And that's in a military context, not even a police context.

So it's bad enough they're using military hardware, but then they're not even using it according to proper training.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGhfyQXZOwg

>arrest anyone who writes code that is vulnerable and is exploited by a malicious party and causes damages.

That is your logic.

Military context is often safer and more humane than police context

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

Exactly.

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.

The police believe themselves to be at war with everyone. They'd kill anyone they pleased if they could get away with it.

I don't think that that's quite a reasonable take on things either--I do not believe that officers wake up every day going "Man, I hope I get to shoot some kids today".

Such hyperbole makes it harder to understand their position and hence to effect useful change.

No, but some police do seem to have a mentality where they think they need to be a substitute jury or provide some of the corporal punishment the legal system omits.

Very few police ever fire their gun during their career. But an officer who killed a man by my work 2000, that was his third fatality. All same MO, mentally ill guy with a knife, close the distance under 21 feet and shoot.

Maybe they violently raid the easy targets whilst ignoring the more dangerous ones.

That's my suspicion.

Sometimes "no-knock" warrants can cause the deaths of police officers when they otherwise wouldn't have.

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.

I hate the "war on drugs" and the levels to which the police take it, but the only person who said "a small amount of drugs" was the parent. I can't imagine that a SWAT team would be used for a "small amount of drugs".

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.

1) And how does raiding their place when they aren't there for evidence somehow result in this violence you speak of?

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".

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.

Me:

> 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.

You asserted that crimes where the police might need to barge in without knocking in order to prevent destruction of evidence are most likely nonviolent crimes. In fact, that kind of situation is almost exclusively drug crime, and the drug world is a violent place.

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.

> You asserted that crimes where the police might need to barge in without knocking in order to prevent destruction of evidence are most likely nonviolent crimes. In fact, that kind of situation is almost exclusively drug crime, and the drug world is a violent place.

> 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 ].

It has been about a day without a response so I'm assuming you lack such sources/evidence to support your claim.

You are demanding data to support the idea that drug rings are associated with violence. That demand does not suggest to me that this will lead to a productive conversation regardless of how I answer. So if you want to believe that associates of Mexican drug lords are all hippie antiwar activists, I guess I am not going to be the one to disabuse you of that notion.

Actually, I'm demanding data that drug arrests are more dangerous than other arrests. Or really any data supporting your position in general.

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.

Prohibition 101:

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.

This is true to some degree, though I think legalizing many drugs would still not take away a large portion of the associated criminality. People with bad coke or meth addictions just don't care very much who they hurt.

Hurting people is already illegal.

Yes? Why are you telling me this?

Knocking down the door, okay fine. But did they really need to throw in a flashbang? Maybe they could have used some kind of thermal vision to see through the wall for children.

Thermal is blocked by windows, much less walls.

Or, they could like look around the house and spot children toys lying around the front yard.

Yeah, who needs attack dogs or weapons to secure your illegal operation? Just scatter some toys in the front yard and park a mini van with stick figure family in front. Done. No police will ever barge in on your operation as clearly "kids live there"

The issue really is the proliferation of paramilitary in western society expanded under whatever pretext was valid at the time: war on drugs, war on terror, etc.

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.

We have the same thing in the UK, you won't see any flash bangs being used here though.

Like in the the other European countries, too.

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.

The paramilitary home invasions authorized by U.S. injustice system is a small part of the increased militarization of the police who use military tactics and decommissioned military hardware stemming from the over decade long military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Also "middle America", European descendant U.S. citizens have little altruism for homeless, undocumented and oppressed nation peoples (New African, Chicano, Native American). Since the late 60s, middle america have had a knee jerk reaction toward more policing, more prisons, harsher criminal sentencing like "three strikes", and reactionary laws like Florida's "stand your ground". Marginalized U.S. inhabitants have little say in how their communities are policed and face police state conditions and a country with the highest per capita prison population.

I'm easily a member of the "European descendant US citizens", and I don't exactly have a lot of say in it either.

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.

Jose Guerena was armed and a Marine vet protecting his family but Tuscon SWAT still killed him(1). But it can go the other way as police have been shot and killed in paramilitary raids. I brought up "stand your ground" laws as indicative of middle America's mindset for more lethal response to the perceived criminal threat in their communities. That mindset has also included support for harsher sentencing and more police, even as the "police industrial complex" grows more into a police state and military occupation.

(1)http://rt.com/usa/168072-us-drugs-swat-police/

"stand your ground" laws, are, I suppose, "more lethal" in the sense they don't require you to retreat if theoretically possible as viewed in the calm of a criminal trial, but I think you're otherwise vastly overstating what the "indicate". Using the loaded term "reactionary" strikes me as entirely out of place.

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.

The militarization of the police predates Iraq 2 by at least a decade, it was happening under the Clinton administration, who authorized letting national guard equipment be loaned to police for any activity that could be plausibly connected to drugs.

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.)

BTW, it was liberal except for some things like gun control Democratic Michigan Congressman John Dingell who first referred to the BATF as "jack-booted" "fascists" (he routinely used that word), as early as 1981. Although at the time he probably was a member of the NRA's 76 member Board of Directors.

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.

Except when they're not. Just some recent example http://bit.ly/1jfqHbr

Yes, I know the case. It was unfortunate. But it happens so rarely. In that case, the police man was overwhelmed, because he got too close.

> They are almost uniquely a product of the drug war.

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.)

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