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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
>> 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.
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.
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.
General optimism, hoping that certain culture wars (the 60s) will age out generationally, some positive evidence from countries with harm reduction focuses (Portugal).
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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."
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 ].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
> 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.)
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."
> "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."
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.
It is complicated and state specific. In my state it would not be necessary to divorce to protect your largest asset - your house. Any house owned by a husband and wife that is titled as Joint Tenants of the Entirety (default) is protected from creditors of the husband OR wife (but not AND).
I'd remove that exemption in this case. I want an officer that uses excessive force to be at risk of losing his house, his car, and all of his assets right down to his underwear. And I want him to be aware of this, because I want that knowledge to influence his decision to use that force in the first place. I want him to know that he's literally laying everything on the line. (Again, if he doesn't like this, he's free to resign.)
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.
>It's unconstitutional as a violation of due process, to suspend officers without pay, before they have been adjudicated as having done something wrong.
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.
> 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?
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!
> 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?
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.
"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 issue was about cutting off one's livelihood before conviction, and the inconsistency in saying that it's okay to do that to normals, but a horrible atrocity to do the police.
> 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.
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?
I'm not sure what your reference to "executive interpretations" is about, but the level of process that is due has been determined through case law. The test for the past 30+ years has been a balancing test that considers the following factors:
"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.
>"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.
Your statement ("modern executive interpretations that 'due process' in the law simply means any established process") is not consistent with Holder's statement, as described by the very title of the article you linked to: ("Attorney General Holder: Due Process Doesn't Necessarily Mean a Courtroom.")
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."
You are correct that a balancing test is always going to be more vague and open-ended than hard, bright line rules. But the advantage is that it lets the courts adapt to new situations flexibly. This is the entire approach of the "common law" on which our legal system is based. And when you are familiar with prior court cases in which judges have applied the test, the test becomes less vague and open-ended.
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.
The biggest problem with the rant is that it only attacks symptoms of the underlying disease. The underlying disease is the nonsensical War On Drugs. End that and most of these symptoms go away on their own.
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.
(1) Nothing prohibits officers from having to agree to these policies when they join the force. If they don't like it, they can find another job. Members of the military already have to give up certain rights while serving.
(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.
> It's unconstitutional as a violation of due process, to suspend officers without pay, before they have been adjudicated as having done something wrong.
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.
When the parent says "adjudicated" he does not mean one needs to go through a criminal proceeding. If there is a property interest involved[1], the government cannot deprive you of it without due process. The level of process can vary depending on a balancing test and the facts involved, but usually will require some sort of notice and pre-deprivation hearing.
[1] An at-will employee will not have a property interest, but a government employee with a contract will.
> 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.
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.
> Premediated murder requires specific intent to kill. Even if the kid had died, it would most likely be negligent homicide.
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.
For starters, you should read the Illustrated Guide to Law (http://lawcomic.net/guide/?page_id=5) and perhaps buy the print copy of the book. Focus on Chapter 6, about Mens Rea, and Chapter 8, Actus Reus.
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.
Your own honest question has an implicit answer in the fact that you can't indiscriminately throw shit into peoples property. Even if it was a barbie doll you threw in there and it killed 5 people.
Upon applying the changes 1 and 3 you suggested, this seems to be a reasonable solution to start from. At the end of the day we need some degree of accountability. Currently we have practically none.
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).
"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."
"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]"
The increasing militarization of police in the USA has seemingly had a significant (and hopefully unintended) side-effect: Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants.
Hate to be so basic but when you've decided to be a hammer, everything eventually looks like a nail.
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.
The problem is most people think/thought the police are there to "protect and serve" them (the people/individuals) when they are not. The police are there to protect and serve the government.
ADD: The government is SUPPOSE to protect and serve the people.
Is this enough to be able to challenge the constitutionality out of SWAT team usage and no-knock warrants, based on the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. For example, in this case, the police were looking for one individual and found a family inside. Shouldn't the police treat them all as innocent instead of enemy combatants until they've positively identified the suspect?
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?
>If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make
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.
This is an interesting point, and depending on the jurisdiction, some judges are elected officials.
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.
OK, but the judge can only go by the evidence s/he is presented with. This judge might have been rubber-stamping SWAT raid applications, or might have been given sufficient evidence to think there was a serious risk of a firefight.
Are judges required to make a statement on each warrant justifying their decision to grant a warrant given the information presented, or is it basically just a signature.
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?
Sure, but elected positions do not work that way. ;)
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.
>Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants. //
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.
> Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such.
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.
There's nothing especially odd about it, there are lots of non-violent reasons to have an automatic assault rifle in an urban environment. /s
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.
I'm struggling to understand how any of the officers on the SWAT team - or, for that matter, those who formulated the policies to use tools like M-16s and flash grenades in drug raids - could possibly consider their actions to be less serious than someone taking or dealing in drugs.
You're missing the social context here. First, this is never about using it's about dealing. Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking. Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.
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.
>Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.
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:
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When a police department forms a swat team, they're going to use it, even for minor offenses.
While this specific story is staged in Atlanta, this is happening throughout the country, in every state.
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.
> Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking.
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:
Atlanta spends over $15,000 per pupil per year on schools, 50% over the OECD average, and about as much as Switzerland (although, adjusted for PPP Atlanta still spends much more than Switzerland).
Spending per pupil is not necessarily the right metric. The net spending accounts for paying for teachers who can't teach, overly priced contracts to the businesses connected to school boards, corruption, etc.
Net educational spending isn't even the right metric.
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.
And for social context too, this roughness is probably mandatory in a country where it's so easy to buy weapons : they never know what they will face (I'm not defending them either).
That, exactly. And I simply cannot fathom how the response to a flash-bang grenade in a cot with a child in it can ever be "well, obviously there was no way for us to know there were children, so don't blame us" instead of "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE WE'RE SO SORRY!"
Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous.
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.
Police departments profit as well. They are able to confiscate all kinds of "evidence" like the car a dealer uses when they're selling drugs and then auction those items off. It's an extremely perverse incentive which must be eliminated.
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.
> Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous.
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.
Drug cartels and drug slavery are utterly orthogonal to what amounts to misdemeanor possession, which is essentially what many of these cases (including, for all I know, this one) amount to.
Should the SWAT team be able to toss a flashbang into your child's crib because you have a dime bag in the nightstand?
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.
You must live in the comfortable confines of tranquil suburbia americana. Stay there. Don't wake up. Be happy. It's better for you that way. Have another latte.
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.
Making unsupported assumptions about someone usually not only produces incorrect conclusions but is also a poor form of argument. I fail to see how anything you said is relevant to this discussion.
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?
I agree with everything you said. But I'm not following your point of "have you considered the likelihood that the cop by your side shares his/her bed with someone else". What do you mean with that statement?
I read the statement as:
If the dystopian future the gun wielding maniac above is waiting for comes then he must understand that said police officer could potentially have other priorities to protect.
They also have the opportunity to not enter the house.
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.
I once observed the cops break down a door. They knocked first, several times, loudly, and warned they would enter the house by force, before busting open the door. No grenades or guns were involved. That seems like the right kind of caution when violating a person's home. Yes, sure, in a drug raid that leaves time for flushing things down the toilet, but to me that seems like a reasonable trade-off.
Well sure, but the policy as it stands is to send SWAT into the house in the dead of night. Obviously, we need some sort of policy change.
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.
I'd appreciate if you'll find a flaw in the following:
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?
Well if you are in the home of someone who deals drugs, then you are placing yourself at risk. To achieve (4), you must either a) move elsewhere or b) cooperate with police to arrest your brother. I'm assuming you are currently not doing anything overtly illegal yourself.
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.
That makes sense, thanks. I have an issue with 'police thought' though. I was flying through the US airspace once and the plane made a stop at Seattle. We get off the plane, had a snack (and smoke) and then boarded the plane again. I realized shortly afterwards that somebody confiscated my "Knife" magazine (I bought it at the departure airport and the mag was mostly about some survival bullshit and other "tactical" stuff). As I learned (with the help of the crew and reading stuff online later) DHS searches and confiscates "suspicious" items.
Now, do I have a trail or not? What if that magazine was about automatic weapons? Explosives? Controlled substance chemistry? Nuclear physics? Islam? Christianity? Patriotism? Tea party?..oh, shi...
I think that is the mentality they need. I rather have a dead criminal than a dead police officer. Unfortunately, mistakes will always happen, so this OP piece, while unfortunately, will continue to happen. This time it happened to be a baby, which makes matters a lot more terrible for all involved.
Last year 44 police officers were killed violently[1] in the line of duty, and over 400 innocent people were mistakenly killed by the police. I'm not going to complain much about the police shooting violent criminals, but we're well past the stage of worrying about that.
[1] EDIT: Many more are killed in vehicular accidents.
You really can't say it has "nothing to do with it." Just look at the sentencing guidelines between crack and coke. Listen to the original hearings from when pot was made illegal. Look at the proportion of people in prison for pot (hint: It doesn't reflect the racial make-up of users). Yes — in some parts of the country the disparity is based more on class than race. But that's definitely not the whole story.
Race isn't everything, but it's ridiculous to pretend that race hasn't substantially influenced the drug war. Even aside from the highly unbalanced prosecution and conviction of drug offenders depending on race, race colors everything in the drug war: look at the history of marijuana [0], for instance, or crack cocaine sentencing practices.
Just because some meth labs run by white guys get busted, doesn't mean that there isn't a racial element to the drug war. One does not follow from the other. Convictions for possession, for instance, are massively biased compared to the usage by group.
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.
If your constituents are racists, you have to find policies that support those views by proxy -- the war on drugs, immigration control, abortion rights, and so on. Over time, people end up remembering the propaganda and forget the real reasons these ideas gained so much support in the beginning.
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.
The majority of your 'white coke' or powder cocaine busts are of Hispanic dealers (that's how it gets into the country and distributed to the big cities). Crack busts on the other hand were almost exclusively Africa-American dealers. They'd make crack out of powder cocaine once it got to their neighborhoods.
It's more of a money thing. In the US, law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep and liquidate assets seized during drug raids. This generates a lot of money for the agencies, many of which have small budgets otherwise.
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.
It became somewhat about money, but that's a fairly recent development in policing in general -- it's not much different from allowing the executive branch to keep all or part of other various fines.
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.
When I read stuff like this, I'm really happy that I am not living in the US. It sounds so crazy to a European person, I can't really imagine how Americans manage to normally live their lives.
You know, I was about to type a kind of snarky reply along the lines of "Ukraine is still in Europe, no?" and then I realized I had to pick the country in Europe that is literally in the midst of a civil war to get to a comparable situation. Sigh.
Indeed, I was also contemplating some kind of dismissive reply then I remembered I am reading an excellent book about the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday (which I am old enough to just remember happening) and decided not to make that kind of comment:
[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.]
That was an exceptional episode in a period when NI was basically in a state of civil breakdown. I don't think you can extrapolate from that one datum.
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.
I agree, I don't think that they are directly comparable - I was merely commenting on the fact that it is easy for us Europeans to make snide comments about the level of armed violence in the US when we actually have occasional outbursts of extreme levels of violence here, even if the overall level is much lower.
Thankfully it didn't take 30 years to admit that killing Jean Charles de Menezes was a mistake.
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.
That was dreadful and I feel slightly ashamed for never having heard of it! The response of the policeman who said:
"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."
Oh, and this isn't much at all compared to what was going on in Algeria at the same time: large-scale torture (on both sides), bombings, summary executions... Fun times. Fortunately, democratic nations can't have "fun" on quite the same scale nowadays, though to be sure, the fellows enjoying US hospitality at Bagram airfield must have gotten their own "fun".
Good enough that it was used as an instruction manual, unfortunately. And several of the torturers would go on to teach various right-wing regimes how to extract information from prisoners.
Belarus would probably qualify too, not that "repressive dictatorship" is a whole lot better for the comparison than "civil war".
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.
Flash banging children nearly to death is fortunately rare. Unfortunately no-knock warrants are less so: 50,000 in 2005 and rising. In a community that is hugely concerned with virtual privacy rights re: the NSA, we don't seem to spend much time caring about physical privacy rights, re: poor people having their houses broken into by state sponsored armed forces.
"I can't really imagine how Americans manage to normally live their lives."
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.
>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.
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.
Two years ago, the house behind mine was raided by Portland's version of SWAT, SERT. The scary thing for me was the house number matched my house number, but was on the next street.
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.
The US is a big place (note: I'm not American either). Keep in mind that your comment is similar to a non-European reading about far-right violence and recent EU parliament election success and thinking, "When I read stuff like this, I'm really happy I am not living in Europe. It sounds so crazy to a [Canadian|Australian|etc.] person."
Should we factor in the largest prison population per capita in the world and transfer of surplus military gear to police to nullify the 'big place' factor?
My point was most Americans have no experience with these sorts of events despite their apparent pervasiveness, just as most Europeans have little experience with far-right parties despite their recent successes.
Most financially well off, white Americans have no experience, I suspect that's also the demographic of most people on HN. I have friends who come from a poorer background than me and most of them have either been subject to police abuse themselves, or have friends/family who has been abused or even killed by police.
He's referring to the recent success of fascist parties like Front National in France. Other parties are less openly xenophobic, but as so often it's just hidden behind a thin veneer of nationalism.
A college acquaintance was tackled by a SWAT officer, still blinded from looking directly in surprise at the flash bang that had come through his window, bound with a zip tie, then "accidentally" kicked in the face as they tore his entire apartment from floor to ceiling looking for the cocaine being sold. When they didn't find anything in any room, they started tearing open his bedroom walls with an axe, sure he was hiding the pounds of cocaine somewhere.
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.
>Another time, I left my apartment to walk to the convenience store across the street once and was immediately met with six Springfield (OR) Police officers with weapons drawn, 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.
This happens with surprising frequency from what I hear. I know of a couple people with almost the same story.
No, this is happening in most parts of the country.
See http://www.cato.org/raidmap (more "neutral" source welcome, if someone has another information source/raw data link).
In 2014 there have been two. In 2012, none. 2013 isn't even listed as an option. Deaths from cars hitting wildlife happens all around the country but I wouldn't say that's representative of the state of the country, nor do most of the citizens live in fear of this happening.
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.
Yeah I got that. But the link doesn't show it's all that common either. Basically none since 2011, and America is a big country. A handful a year across 330 million people is too many, but not nearly as common as the European and my parent are making it out to be.
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.
Are you arguing against my point, or against someone else? Your first sentence could be a reply to me, but you're making a claim that contradicts the evidence that I'm arguing against, and you present no new evidence. Just saying "it's common" doesn't make it so. The rest of your post has nothing to do with anything I've said, so I will assume you meant to reply to someone else.
I was thinking that "no-knock" raids happened very little around my area (Denver) but this map proved me wrong. While not exactly commonplace, I found several instances of raids in/around Denver based on nothing but a single informant. Some of the news stories were just like the OP--police bust into wrong place and kill someone completely innocent.
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.
I live in the US and have never had to deal with this and live a normal life. I am by no means defending this, in fact I think it's disgusting and awful, but it's not happening on every single street in the county. Yet.
> I live in the US and have never had to deal with this and live a normal life. I am by no means defending this, in fact I think it's disgusting and awful, but it's not happening on every single street in the county. Yet.
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 recently made the mistake of calling the local police when I heard some ongoing disturbance outside of my apartment window around 3am. I told them it's probably nothing, but they may want to look into it. I thought they may send out one car to drive by and see if everything's OK.
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.
And again, US has the largest per capita number of prisoners in the whole 190 countries. Most of these prisoners are in prison for drug-related charges. Think about that. Yes, SWAT attacks are not happening on every single street, but government destroying lives seems to happen on most streets.
It might help you understand why a significant portion of Americans are reluctant to allow the government to place further restrictions on firearm ownership.
America is a weird place. If we collectively felt it was out of control or being abused we would fight back through law or force if it got to that point. We're generally just glad to have those options.
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.
I'm of the unfortunate opinion that Americans are too pacified and complacent to actually step up and do anything against the government. I would love to see people reacting with force and violence at a system that is so oppressive and belligerent.
Go onto youtube and search for "german police beating". There are hours of footage of German police kicking the crap out of protesters (punches to the face, etc). The German police are notorious for being very physical.
Punches to the face are better than holes in the chest. If I had to pick from "will get punched in the face with 90% certainty" or "will get a hole in the chest with 0.01% certainty", I'd pick the first one. Heck, I'd punch myself in the face once for good measure, too.
I would as well, but I think my example shows that public tolerance of police behavior varies among countries. German would be horrified with US cops shooting random civilians and Americans are horrified by German police beating suspects for relatively minor infractions.
That's not a good comparison, show me a video of German police raiding a house while using extreme violence. Not that I'm a big fan of the police, but in this case it's comparing apples to oranges.
Caveat: I don't support frequent use of no-knock warrants.
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?
No, but I wouldn't raid a house either. I'm no police tactician, but it can't possibly be true that raiding a house is less dangerous than waiting for the suspect to leave his house and arresting him then. For anyone, including the cops. SWAT teams raiding homes should be reserved for active dangers, like hostage situations or shootouts. There's no need for this sort of urgency for apprehending a drug dealer especially given the collateral damage it's so likely to cause.
Your question is why we have laws for how police can operate.
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.
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.
I'm surprised by the huge difference between those articles. Somehow i do find your article more believable. News outlets prefer to spin the story the other way because that kind of story is much more popular. It sheds light on a whole other side of what happened and i'm shocked to see how the posted article just lies about half of it.
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.
I'm of the opinion that just because someone is a drug dealer and has been known to carry a weapon, doesn't mean that person is going to get in a shoot out with the police. I'd be willing to bet (note: I've not seen any hard statistics on this matter) that 9 times out of 10 the criminal decides that it's in his/her better interest to just be arrested and fight it later, than it is to get in a gun battle with heavily armed cops. It's an interesting thing that typical police line of thinking goes something like:
1: person MAY be a criminal of some form
2: person MAY have a weapon
3: person MAY use said weapon in a futile attempt to avoid arrest or injury
4: let's get 10 cops, arm them to the teeth, storm their house in a disorienting and scary middle of the night raid, during which we will throw explosives, brandish military type weapons, and yell and act aggressively
5: there is less of a chance that during the raid a criminal will react violently than if the police do not break in in the middle of the night screaming and waving guns
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".
It wasn't "we have to go in, better arm up." They could have watched the house and gathered more information. Since they have a warrant, are cops allowed to thermally image a house to get a headcount? Technical question: would that work or am I imagining something from TV?
Nah we don't have thermal imaging that precise yet, also, the thermal difference between outside the house and inside the house sort of washes away any lingering body heat you might be looking for in most cases.
America is a scary country to live in. I am not sure if it is just the fact that this sort of thing gets reported more often of late ...only for America, or just that I've been paying more attention of late.
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.
This is a side-effect of police militarization that doesn't get much attention from its critics: using advanced military equipment should also require advanced military training. Local police agencies that receive all this new military-spec equipment don't always get (or more likely, never get) the funding for necessary training on how to use it. Much less does such training really exist since this stuff was all designed for use in actual war zones. The extant training materials would inherently be oriented around that type of usage.
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.
Lack of proper military training is not the problem here. The problem is the militarization in the first place. In war, collateral damage is considered unavoidable and ultimately acceptable in pursuit of victory, which is why drug warriors accept that the occasional baby will be maimed by a flashbang. That sort of approach is unacceptable for domestic law-enforcement. The solution is to roll back the militarization, not double down by giving police more military training.
Hence why I said the lack of training is a side-effect of militarization. In other words, yes, militarization of police is the main problem here. I agree with you; I was just pointing out yet-another-reason why it is even worse in practice than in theory.
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?
Legalize all drugs, and fill each one with literature about how damaging it is to you (similar to what some countries do on cigarette packs). If you can get heroin at CVS, you wouldn't need to go to your local drug dealer and help finance his shady/violent activities. I know it sounds crazy but we already knowingly sell stuff that can kill you (cigarettes, alcohol). The gangs/drug dealers would simply not survive if drugs were sold legally and conveniently.
They will sit on unused SWAT teams and use them to collect unpaid parking fees and arrest suspected loiterers from yesterday. I'm exaggerating only slightly. The point is, if judges are signing no-knock raids from non-violent suspects possibly owning small amount of marijuana, they will be signing them for other petty crimes too.
End of war of drugs would just re-channel the same tactic against other targets.
This is already being done in Portugal. I don't think the new addicts you're imagining would materialize. If you want to do meth, it isn't hard. Legalizing it doesn't make it that much easier. You get addicted to meth because it complements your personality, not because you have access to it.
First, I don't think we'd see a surge of new addiction like you expect. Second, we are already footing the bill for drug addiction, plus the violence it causes, plus the extra policing, plus legal costs, plus incarceration costs. Even with a surge in addiction, we'd still come out far ahead of the current situation.
That's ridiculous. They sell drugs because it is the Easiest way they know. Without drugs, they'd need to find some other, less easy way. Supply+Demand teaches that those other opportunities would be less available
They could go into other illegal fields, or they could move somewhere where their illegal drug expertise is useful, or they could become farmers or teachers or simply retire.
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".
1. Understand the structure of the system. SWAT teams and local police are a local problem, not a national one. Cases like this will happen all around the country, but there really isn't anything you can do about it. It is up to the local population to elect their police chiefs (or... elect mayors / governors who choose good police chiefs).
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.
I am, in fact, aware of the difference between local, state, and federal government. Much like the US federal government, state governments are also divided into multiple branches, with law enforcement part of the executive branch. Municipal governments tend to be a little less well-defined, but still nominally respect a separation of powers.
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.
It is important to remember the separation. What is true at the national scale is rarely the case in a municipality. The legislative branch of my State for instance is clearly the powerhouse, and I feel like my fellow citizens didn't realize the obvious Gerrymandering that just destroyed the only Republican district of the state. (It came up for referendum but... no one seemed to notice the importance of the vote).
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.
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.
Long term? Make these sorts of stories public, demand change, write to your representatives, write to the media. Takes about 40 to 80 years.
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.
The the police will get tanks and shell their way into your bunker. The police is engaged in an arms race. But they are the only ones who are in the race.
First, stop to speak about 'war' on insert-bad-thing-here.
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.
Good grief. SWAT teams in the US are utterly out of control. It's one thing to have resources for the relatively rare armed robbery/hostage/mass shooter situation, to respond to an outbreak of violence; it's quite another to be using them for drug raids and other contexts where they initiate or are the sole cause of violence. This goes hand in hand with the confrontation-obsessed gun culture we have, in which a subset of gun owners dwell constantly on the omnipresent risks of crime and the need for elephant-grade stopping power, despite the clear long-term trend of falling crime.
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.
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...
The real problem is that the war on drugs if fantastically profitable for everyone involved: drug cartels, police, and for-profit prisons alike. Just look at the original criminalization of marijuana (and indeed the English adoption of the Mexican word used to invoke racist hatred and fear) which was basically spearheaded by Dow so they could sell their inferior synthetic substitutes for hemp.
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).
> 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
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.
Also note how many raids are the result of a single informant. I was browsing raids in my area and most of them were from a single informant; in one case even an informant who had a known antagonistic relationship with the subject of the raid.
What's disturbing is how many of them are based on a single informant and also look like not the slightest effort was made to verify that information. Literally picking up a guy off the street for some minor crime, telling him you'll let him go for a bigger fish, getting an address from him, and sending in the goons without another thought. If it's a big enough crime to justify a SWAT raid, then surely it's big enough for just a little bit of investigation.
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.
If you are a small(ish) town cop and you get fancy new military gear then you're going to want to use it no matter if you need to or not. People like playing with toys.
I'm not normally a fan of litigation, but in this case they should sue the police department into the ground. If this behaviour was way too expensive to sustain because of liabilities, they'd have to curtail it.
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?
I agree, but settlements don't hurt enough - ultimately they come out of the taxpayer's pocket,a nd unless a mayor or police chief is held personally responsible, all that happens is a game of bureaucratic musical chairs. This also needs civil suits against the officers, and jail terms. At least the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is treating it as a criminal incident, so it's possible that one or more of these police may do time.
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.
We don't need draconian measures; we need substantive and reliably enforced measures. People respond much more strongly to certainty of punishment than severity.
I hew to the economic view that they respond to the combination of the two, in contrast to this position paper: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%2... which I think begs the question. The problem is that certainty of punishment is difficult to achieve, especially where co-offenders have a strong incentive to back each other up - in this case, groups of police officers :-(
We should (for some value of "should") respond to the expected value plus something like the Kelly criterion. In practice, my understanding is that the research consistently shows that we are systematically less sensitive to severity than certainty. Of course the severity needs to be sufficient that it can't just be written off as a cost of doing business, but that is true long before we hit "draconian". You can insist that, in spite of the research, we're all perfect little economic calculators acting rationally, but know that you run significant chance of being wrong.
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...)
> That it was for drugs is the most disturbing part. How does that help anyone in any capacity?
It helps police departments keep their budgets and continues their access to militarization programs (where the DoD gives them surplus equipment after combat operations).
Sadly this doesn't seem to work. There is little to no correlation between settlements and the divisions within an organization that they are supposed to punish, especially for large jurisdictions.
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.
I'm not so sure. Atlanta made tons of changes after the Kathryn Johnson incident and the Atlanta Eagle raid. They totally disbanded the red dog unit, and have been much more sensitive to public perception after those events. I think more importantly this shows that these small county (Habersham, ~40k total county pop) police forces have no business having "SWAT" teams, much less doing no-knock drug raids.
I can't argue with that, just felt the need to defend APD a bit, as a lot of people are confusing them with the redneck swat team who threw the flashbang into a crib. APD has changed a ton for the better after Turner became chief. Before that, Pennington from New Orleans PD was clearly a mistake for the city, and led to many of the largest APD scandals in recent history.
Yes they hurt the taxpayers, which means the taxpayers should be concerned that their police department is acting so flagrantly and apply more pressure to get that fixed.
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...
Absolutely. This is the unfortunate effect of the militarisation of the police force and how ridiculous the War on Drugs has become! They were looking for drugs ...
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.
These stories seem fake to me. I know they are real but I have trouble believing that people, human beings would actually act like this. Why do we have people acting as police that wouldn't let a mother comfort her crying, very injured child. They weren't after her, she wasn't the criminal.
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.
A society like the one you describe should not have nuclear weapons. Now I'm afraid that if it weren't for the MAD (mutual assured destruction) US would have been much more genocidal.
Oh, we probably would have invaded/nuked the Soviet Union. It's not like MAD stopped us from sowing destruction and chaos around the globe, either. It just made us fight proxy wars instead of real ones with other nuclear powers.
It's become very popular to compare the United States to undeveloped countries and countries in civil war, then declare everything is fine because, comparatively, it looks OK.
It's a very, very sad state of affairs when you have to compare a developed country to undeveloped ones.
I think what he's trying to say is that all those things seem so surreal. We believe them, but reading the stories feels like you're reading something out of a movie. For people living in normal circumstances it's hard to imagine that some people are so cruel.
Exactly. I always read these stories and think... Is this the onion? Am I reading comedy?
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.
You are providing examples of aggressors, not protectors.
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.
The way the psychology works is that police regard everyone as a potential threat and a criminal, which makes them essentially not human in their eyes. When dealing in a "tactical phase" or whatever the hell they call it, they take command of a situation and have a very paranoid view of everything.
There is like 30+ years of social-psych research and papers backing up why average people (the swat team members) can become truly the hand of evil as situations demand of them. The most (in)famous of these studies is the Milgram shock experiment which showed average people in general willing to kill innocent people if authority insisted. A less famous study, the Stanford prison experiment, showed that people were more than willing to objectify others when they were in positions of power.
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.
> I know they are real but I have trouble believing that people, human beings would actually act like this.
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?
Then there's the case where the police found drugs in the mail, but let it be delivered anyway. When the homeowner (the mayor of the town, incidentally) came home and brought the package in, they attacked, killing his two labradors (one while it was trying to run away).
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."
If stories like this are new to anyone reading this, there is a great book worth checking out. "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" by Radley Balko, ISBN-13: 9781610392112
I came here to post a link to that exact book - the one thing I will say is that the book is basically divided into two sections. The first section is a history of the militarization of US police that is fascinating, well-researched, and full of 50 years of context that I was totally unaware of. The book is worth reading for that alone.
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.
We didn't learn our lesson from Prohibition, and now it's happening all over again, only worse.
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.
This obviously needs work, but I think it's headed in the right direction.
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 :-)
And yet if you suggest that police are anything less than complete heroes in every way your neighbors and relatives will shun you. Defending yourself against a corrupt, ignorant, and vindictive police force is one of the best uses I can think of for the second amendment.
Police militarization has many causes and many bad effects. The pointless and faintly racist "drug war" is one that has been noted in many comments here. There's another that deserves mention, not because I believe it's most significant but because it seems strangely absent from those same comments.
>>> 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.
In Western Europe and much of Asia, almost nil (countries like South Korea, Japan ...) In many countries, I'm afraid it's quite common, abuse of police power is nothing strange here. I've had it happen to me.
South Africa (Pretoria). And by, I've had that happen to me, I mean Police intimidation, not a flashbang in my chest. For that sort of thing see Palestine, Iraq etc However we see abuse of Police power very often here.
You can see police intimidation everywhere. Even in Slovenia and other EU countries, I believe. But there is a difference between "go home, you're drunk" (even though you have a legal right to be there) and "BANG! BANG!".
This is what comes from the aggressive militarization of our local police forces. Tell me again why our hometown of 7,000 (at the time) felt the need to develop a full-fledged SWAT unit. It has become even worse since 9/11. Shoddy police work, an itchy trigger finger, and officers who seem to view local neighborhoods as insurgent-ridden Iraqi streets, has led to inexcusable collateral damage. The need for a responsive, well-funded police force is undeniable. But, clear leadership and strong, judicious restraint must balance that power.
This will be getting worse unless people disconnect themselves from the system that allows things like this to happen.
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.
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."
Is there any information about the actual incidence of this kind of thing? Best thing I can find is from the ACLU report, which suggests 5 non-suicide fatalities and 46 injuries -- but that's clearly from their limited subset.
1. Can a person belonging to minority community dominate and trade in Majority dominant country without support of the Majority in most profitable, yet risky trade ? (possibility of being minority being made a scape goat ?)
2. All being said and done, It doesn't matter what colour and state of the kid, its a crime from the SWAT, if it is actually happened.
3. Unfortunately in any Surveillance state, there is no watch dog to make sure what various wings of the state are actually doing are Right - lawfully, morally and ethically.
There is always a way for them to escape from the charges.
Oh, my. What recourse does the family have from all of this. There baby has a hole in his chest and severe burns.....not to mention the unjust nature of not letting a mother tend to her injured kid..
> that we stop accepting brutal SWAT raids as a normal way to fight the “war on drugs.”
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)
Atlanta continues to amaze me. On one hand, I see reports every week from the police department at my school (downtown atlanta)about robberies/ mugging (armed) with usually no police officers around to help. The response times are usually >20 minutes (usually because they are way understaffed). And on the other, I see militarized police brutality. I wish there is a way to funnel my tax dollars to those departments that are going to help people rather than hurt them.
There are some countries where police typically don't even typically carry around projectile weapons. The UK, for instance.
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.
If the police hadn't approached the home with confrontation in mind they may have noticed some other telling clues that the situation may not be what they thought it would be.
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.
So... they caught the nephew eventually and took away his meth. Now we don't have to worry about meth anymore. They have taken care of the problem. Oh.... wait a minute. They haven't even put a dent in the problem.
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?
Maybe flashbang grenades are too dangerous to throw around without warning?!
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.
I was at a State Park in California recently and had a friendly talk with a ranger about local places to visit. It was hard not to notice the AR-15 and Shotgun mounted in his truck, as well as the sidearm on his hip. I'd never seen that before in all my years of camping with family.
Sue. It's the only way they will learn. Also, release some pictures of the boys injuries to the media. This topic needs some major attention and I don't think ever will get it without a large number of citizens being enraged.
Why do Americans accept this sort of behaviour? Why haven't you people voted for some people who want to turn the police into an actual police force, rather than a well-equipped gang?
This is so terrible. I hope this story gets shared everywhere, because this shouldn't be happening. They sent a SWAT team to a house before confirming that the person that they looked for was there? They threw a disabling weapon inside without noticing that there was a family with children in there? And like others have said, all that for a drug bust?
It's sad that someone would give that order in the first place, and that there are people in our police forces who carry it out.
Not to be disrespectful to the family but the only thing that comes to mind is " 'Murica". I know a person here in Canada that was a victim of swat drug bust it was in no way as violent. They came during the day and, yes manhandled the suspects however they were quite polite about it.
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.
1. This happened in rural Georgia, far away from Atlanta.
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.
I'm pretty sure the poor child's situation is a direct result of a flash bang 'distractionary device' being thrown into his crib by law enforcement. The suspect was NOT in the house, and they found NO DRUGS in the house. As for having a semi-auto firearm, um every other single house in Habersham county probably has one or more semi-autos, big deal. This was a poor family in a bad situation, that the poorly trained sheriff's office "swat team" made worse.
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 your death will moderately increase the happiness of a room full of bunnies? The group-ethics model has some pretty obvious limits, which I think you've violated in your example.
100lb (~45kg) at 50mg is about 900,000 doses of meth. I suspect the death rate per 900,000 doses is quite high and the expected outcome probably includes the death of at least one child.
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.
It's entirely legal to own a semi-automatic AK47 (although not if you use and/or possess drugs...but my point stands, as the gun itself would have been perfectly legal).
Signs point to this guy not storing the rifle in a safe fashion, however.
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.
The police threw a grenade into an innocent child's crib. Nothing you've said ends in '...and that's why they clearly had to burn a hole two year old'.
> 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?
Thank you for this. It's true that associating with criminals makes it more likely that things like this will happen to you, but that doesn't justify it. A child getting hospitalized is excessive collateral damage for something indirectly related to the family.
It was obvious from reading the story that there was more to it. The hurt and pain caused is of course awful but leaving out this sort of information is disingenuous and makes this piece essentially propaganda when it didn't need to be.
That said, your comment is off. The suspect is not the father of the child as it appears they were visiting the suspects house.
