Swat raids galore. You might want to think on the following.

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White Paper

July 17, 2006


Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
by Radley Balko

Radley Balko is a policy analyst specializing in civil liberties issues and is the author of the Cato study, "Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Executive Summary

Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.



Botched Paramilitary Police Raids: An Interactive Map




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Full Text (PDF, 2 MB)


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But we're not a police state. These are necessary raids, for the children's safety.

Nothing to see here, move along.
 
Look guys, enough with the cop bashing.

The police have to go in with overwhelming force and firepower in order to prevent any sort of fight back in the perpetrators. You never know who might be on the other side of that door and you bet those cops are going to want to go home to their family at the end of the shift.

So they happen to get a few houses wrong, what's the big deal? Mistakes happen, no one is perfect. Would you rather them just quit going after the drug dealers who are plaguing our society? :confused:
 
So they happen to get a few houses wrong, what's the big deal? Mistakes happen, no one is perfect.
Click to expand...

If they broke into your house at 3 am and killed your family, would you still be saying this? After all, "mistakes happen", right?

Would you rather them just quit going after the drug dealers who are plaguing our society?
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Yes. I'd like to see all forms of prohibition abolished. The only reason the drug dealers are plaguing our society is because drugs are illegal in the first place.
 
Tell me again how it is we're winning the War on Drugs? I remember when policemen didn't wear black masks and balaclavas. Oh, it's those evil drug dealers that are to blame. Note to police: why not just shut down the sewer system to recover any contraband that might be flushed, rather than invade private citizen's homes?
 
If your family must die for them to go home to theirs, oh well. They>You

(They being the specific cops on these raids, their superiors, and he mentality that goes along with this.)

Anthony
 
This is the specific reason we have the 2nd amendment.

Same redcoats.... Different uniform..
 
yes he's joking

take a gander at another post of his RE: taking pics of cops arresting ppl.

You guys, stop with the cop bashing. They're just trying to do their jobs and get home safe to their family at the end of their shift.

And you know how dangerous camera phones are to cops in ballistic vests with full-auto M4s!
__________________
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:D :evil: :neener:

I fell for his little joke , hook line and sinker!

funny funny dude!!!
 
Would you rather them just quit going after the drug dealers who are plaguing our society?
Click to expand...

The overwhelming majority of these type of raids are not against desperate criminals. They are against people who are selling very small amounts of drugs, or are committing some other minor violation of some other (probably unconstitutional) law.

So my answer is stop using insane amounts of force where it is almost never needed and use it where it is. Like go after some gangbangers. Use all the force you want to. Heck take a couple tanks with. Maybe some flamethrowers. At least there you could justify it.
 
Flamethrowers? Don't you remember what happened in Philly in '85 when police used a bomb?

134491556103.jpg
 
I would like to see the per capita numbers of No Knocks that result in the death of a suspect, officer, or innocent versus the per capita numbers of police chases that result in the death of a suspect, officer, or innocent. Departments all over the country are putting very strict procedures in place to govern chases. Chases for minor traffic violations are discontinued because it isn't worth it for a blown stop sign. Shouldn't No Knocks have a similar set of standards to reduce the risk of deaths for minor offenses?
 
Whoops yeah I laid the sarcasm on a bit thick with that post, sorry! :evil:

I do think it's just as bad as you all are saying, but I wanted to step in before some of the "other" posters on here and accuse you all of being cop-bashing or calling all LEOs "JBTs" or worse. You know, beat them at their own game.

Every time I see a news piece on the local station about how a man with a "alleged handgun" that no one has actually seen "might" be inside one of the buildings in an apartment complex, and then the SWAT team blocks off the entire neighborhood and goes in with full body armor, shields and assault rifles, it makes me die a little more inside. :mad:
 
SWAT is so ingrained in our culture it is now a reality TV show on A&E.

http://www.aetv.com/dallas_swat/index.jsp

I watched an episode (flipping channels), just curious, to see what they were doing. They had two missions: a Hispanic suicide/drug addict trying to off himself and a raid on a drug/prostitute ring at a hotel. It was enlightening to say the least. I guess SWAT is the local DEA.
 
Whatever happened to the guy that shot and killed a police officer that was doing a no-knock raid on his house? IIRC, the broke into the wrong home, didn't identify themselves as they ran in, he shot and killed one of them as they broke into his son's room. He was charged with Murder in the first degree, I think.
 
I would think that a civil lawsuit would result from a police raid on the wrong address. Probably a large monetary settlement would result. If the cost of the settllement came out of the police departments payroll, these types of mistakes would stop.
 
Whatever happened to the guy that shot and killed a police officer that was doing a no-knock raid on his house? IIRC, the broke into the wrong home, didn't identify themselves as they ran in, he shot and killed one of them as they broke into his son's room. He was charged with Murder in the first degree, I think.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the Cory Maye case, but ONLY 'cause you mentioned the child's room. :scrutiny: He still sits on death row last I heard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye
 
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