Quotulatiousness

June 24, 2013

Read an excerpt from Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko

Filed under: Books, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:09

There is an excerpt from the book Rise of the Warrior Cop in the July issue of the ABA Journal:

Are cops constitutional?

In a 2001 article for the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, the legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for police as they exist today. At the very least, he argues, police departments, powers and practices today violate the document’s spirit and intent. “Under the criminal justice model known to the framers, professional police officers were unknown,” Roots writes.

The founders and their contemporaries would probably have seen even the early-19th-century police forces as a standing army, and a particularly odious one at that. Just before the American Revolution, it wasn’t the stationing of British troops in the colonies that irked patriots in Boston and Virginia; it was England’s decision to use the troops for everyday law enforcement. This wariness of standing armies was born of experience and a study of history — early American statesmen like Madison, Washington and Adams were well-versed in the history of such armies in Europe, especially in ancient Rome.

If even the earliest attempts at centralized police forces would have alarmed the founders, today’s policing would have terrified them. Today in America SWAT teams violently smash into private homes more than 100 times per day. The vast majority of these raids are to enforce laws against consensual crimes. In many cities, police departments have given up the traditional blue uniforms for “battle dress uniforms” modeled after soldier attire.

Police departments across the country now sport armored personnel carriers designed for use on a battlefield. Some have helicopters, tanks and Humvees. They carry military-grade weapons. Most of this equipment comes from the military itself. Many SWAT teams today are trained by current and former personnel from special forces units like the Navy SEALs or Army Rangers. National Guard helicopters now routinely swoop through rural areas in search of pot plants and, when they find something, send gun-toting troops dressed for battle rappelling down to chop and confiscate the contraband. But it isn’t just drugs. Aggressive, SWAT-style tactics are now used to raid neighborhood poker games, doctors’ offices, bars and restaurants, and head shops — despite the fact that the targets of these raids pose little threat to anyone. This sort of force was once reserved as the last option to defuse a dangerous situation. It’s increasingly used as the first option to apprehend people who aren’t dangerous at all.

June 18, 2013

Radley Balko’s new book

Filed under: Books, Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

I’m a fan of Radley Balko’s work (I quote him and hat-tip him a fair bit), so I’m looking forward to reading his new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Here’s a glowing review from Scott Greenfield:

The book, published by Public Affairs and scheduled for release on July 9, 2013, starts at the beginning, taking us from the days when Americans policed themselves to the birth of the occupation of policing. While I was well aware of Radley’s persistence and acumen at chronicling current events, I never realized what a thorough researching her is. The history of policing is remarkably impressive.

It’s critical to appreciate the history of policing, to understand that what we now see as normal and inescapable wasn’t always the case. For most of our history, this country did not have a group of people with shields and guns who wandered the streets ordering people about. The fall from grace, If you perceive it as I do, came fast and hard.

American attitudes toward police were built on images of Andy Griffith, strolling the streets of Mayberry to save random cats and, an allusion Radley employs, serving as guest umpire in the occasional baseball game. Good. Honest, One of us. This was the police officer upon whom we relied, and the one we pictured as we told our children that they were here to help us; they were our friend.

Starting in the 1960’s, Radley takes us decade by decades down the road to perdition. As he wears his libertarian politics on his sleeve, it came as no surprise that he gave the politics of law enforcement special scrutiny. His hatred of Richard Nixon for manipulating the silent majority’s hatred of hippies and counterculture into the War on Drugs is palpable. On the other hand, there is no reluctance to blame Bill Clinton for his deceitful abuse of the COPS program, and its infusion of billions into the drug war a few decades later.

Radley is not only a surprisingly good story teller, generally low key in recounting tales of individual harm interspersed with broad influences that gave rise to putting heavy weaponry into the hands of children. There are times when the narrative gets a bit breathless, trying hard to capture the confluence of political deceit on the part of some and ignorance on the part of others. Then again, the alternative would be to simply call out the liars and morons for their contribution to a state of affairs that served to put a naïve American public at grave risk for such puny and transitory purposes as winning an election.

May 9, 2013

Part of the reason the Cleveland kidnapper went undetected is the emphasis on the “War on Drugs”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:48

You may have heard this argument from Radley Balko or the folks at Reason and Reason.tv, but here’s Kristen Gwynnne at Alternet making a very Balko-sounding point about police militarization:

Retired law enforcement veteran Stephen Downing, former captain of detectives in the LAPD, says he has not seen proof that the police officers failed to adequately respond to information in this case; indeed, police cannot possibly crack every case and investigate every angle all the time. At the same time, we must recognize that police are incentivized to go after certain crimes — like drug crimes — and not other, far more heinous crimes, like rape.

In the first place, federal cash giveaways make police departments’ reactions to drug cases much more swift and severe.

“The statistical demands of the drug war and the grants that come from the federal government — all they do is incentivize our local police to chase drugs and chase seizures so they can supplement their budgets,” Downing said. “We call that ‘policing for profit.’”

Furthermore, allowing military training of local police has “turned our police into drug warriors,” instead of “police officers and peace officers.”

“Every police department, every sheriff’s department, and the federal government have personnel that are dedicated 100 percent of the time to drug enforcement,” said Downing, “and the result of that is to use police resources for that purpose.”

[. . .]

Praising the man who helped Amanda Berry escape, Stephen Downing also says police need to become more involved with their communities.

“The community is involved in solving these cases and the willingness of people is helpful,” he said. “If the police would recognize more the true value of their community — that the people are the police and the police are the people — rather than chasing drugs and asset seizures and policing for profit modalities, all our communities would be better off and more aware.”

Update: A few hours later, and Reason also links this piece:

At the crux of the drug war is the victimless crime of narcotics possession and use (and the sales that make that voluntary possession and use possible, tied to which are the weapons needed because of the business’ illegal status). Billions have been spent on law enforcement around the country to combat an essentially private, voluntary choice. Alternet ran a piece this morning explaining some of the perverse benefits for police to going after drug crimes instead of kidnapping, rape and slavery. The rescue of three women by a passer-by from a home police had been alerted to multiple times (and which was apparently occupied by the father of one of the girl’s self-described “best friends”), coupled with incidents like the suspected Boston bomber being spotted not by a massive manhunt but by a homeowner having a cigarette in his backyard and the thwarting of the Times Square bombing not by the heavily-armed and stationary police officers in the area but by local vendors going about their business suggests it’s not money or even manpower but good, alert police work that can solve and stop crimes. Instead, fueled by the militarization of police and the war on drugs, the beat cop’s disappearing while the war on what goes in your body continues, violently.

May 7, 2013

Fox cancels COPS after extremely long run

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Andrew Kirell bids an unfond farewell to a show that spent all its time on the air glorifying the police:

After a 25-year run valorizing America’s police forces to the thumping reggae pulse of Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys,” Fox has canceled its weekly reality TV series COPS. To which we should say: good riddance.

Yes, the show is being picked up by all-things-manly cable network Spike TV, but critics of the increasing militarization of American police should celebrate nevertheless: the long-running series will no longer air its highly-selective take on “policing” to as large an audience as Fox’s Saturday night lineup.

Of all the police reality shows available for viewing today, COPS may actually be the most tolerable. Unlike its cop-shows-on-steroids successors, COPS often did a good job depicting the monotonies of police beat work, and the oddities of dealing with some of the more bizarre domestic disputes. That being said, the show’s legacy is one of glorifying and overlooking abuse through a highly-selective, heavily-edited depiction of “reality.”

As part of its 25-year-long weekly reveling in the humiliation of perps and victims alike, COPS provided a cringe-worthy dose of schadenfreude for those who enjoy hearty laughter at tatted-and-toothless caricatures being taken to task by virtuous, cowboy-like heroes. Viewers with a more skeptical eye, however, might recoil at police officers bragging about “tasing a man” or the weekly knee-in-the-back of a minority teenager for the victimless crime of carrying a bag of marijuana.

Yes, there are many violent crimes broken up by the hardworking police officers shown on COPS, with plenty of gracious victims being helped. But for every breaking up of domestic violence, there are embarrassing displays of arrogance. COPS‘ turning of serious matters into cheap entertainment has often been coupled with the willful neglect of serious issues like police misconduct and civil rights.

May 6, 2013

QotD: This seems like a bad idea

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:13

A Florida county sheriff is being given a million dollars to violate the rights of the people who were stupid enough to put him in office.

According to an article by Palm Beach Post staff writers Dara Kam and Stacey Singer, posted Monday, April 29, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has been awarded $1 million by Florida House and Senate budget leaders for a new “violence prevention unit aimed at preventing tragedies like those in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado.

It would be bad enough if this particular jackbooted thug planned only to use this ill-gotten tax money for the usual militarized toys — machineguns or armored personnel carriers — the cops are so crazy about today, but Bradshaw reportedly wants to create “prevention intervention units” consisting of “specially trained deputies, mental health professionals, and caseworkers”. which “will respond to citizen calls to a 24-hour hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services”.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government…” the Big-Brotherly Bradshaw bloviated. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?'” Since the cops these days do their knocking with a three-foot concrete-filled section of four-inch diameter steel pipe, with welded rebar handles, Bradshaw’s stupid question tends to answer itelf.

L. Neil Smith, “Cutting the Root of Tyranny”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2013-05-06

March 31, 2013

The question is not whether armed drones will be deployed domestically, but when

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:01

Glenn Greenwald presents a strong case that it is inevitable that armed drones will be deployed over the US:

The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU — while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable — have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it’s quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue.

I’m going to focus here most on domestic surveillance drones, but I want to say a few words about weaponized drones. The belief that weaponized drones won’t be used on US soil is patently irrational. Of course they will be. It’s not just likely but inevitable. Police departments are already speaking openly about how their drones “could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun.” The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use. It likely won’t be in the form that has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance).

March 6, 2013

ACLU to investigate the militarization of US police forces

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

At the Huffington Post, Radley Balko reports on a new ACLU campaign:

The militarization of America’s police forces has been going on for about a generation now. Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates first conceived the idea of the SWAT team in the late 1960s, in response to the Watts riots and a few mass shooting incidents for which he thought the police were unprepared. Gates wanted an elite team of specialized cops similar to groups like the Army Rangers or Navy SEALs that could respond to riots, barricades, shootouts, or hostage-takings with more skill and precision than everyday patrol officers.

The concept caught on, particularly after a couple of high-profile, televised confrontations between Gates’ SWAT team and a Black Panther holdout in 1969, and then with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1973. Given the rioting, protests, and general social unrest of the time, Gates’ idea quickly grew popular in law enforcement circles, particularly in cities worried about rioting and domestic terrorism.

[. . .]

Kraska estimates that total number of SWAT raids in America jumped from just a few hundred per year in the 1970s, to a few thousand by the early 1980s, to around 50,000 by the mid-2000s.

The vast majority of those raids are to serve warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes. Police forces were no longer reserving SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics for events that presented an immediate threat to the public. They were now using them mostly as an investigative tool in drug cases, creating violent confrontations with people suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes.

March 5, 2013

Coming soon: the Police-Industrial Complex

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Radley Balko interviewed by Vice:

How did 9/11 alter the domestic relationship between the military and police?

It really just accelerated a process that had already been in motion for 20 years. The main effect of 9/11 on domestic policing is the DHS grant program, which writes huge checks to local police departments across the country to purchase machine guns, helicopters, tanks, and armored personnel carriers. The Pentagon had already been giving away the same weapons and equipment for about a decade, but the DHS grants make that program look tiny.

But probably of more concern is the ancillary effect of those grants. DHS grants are lucrative enough that many defense contractors are now turning their attention to police agencies — and some companies have sprung up solely to sell military-grade weaponry to police agencies who get those grants. That means we’re now building a new industry whose sole function is to militarize domestic police departments. Which means it won’t be long before we see pro-militarization lobbying and pressure groups with lots of (taxpayer) money to spend to fight reform. That’s a corner it will be difficult to un-turn. We’re probably there already. Say hello to the police-industrial complex.

Is police reform a battle that will have to be won legally? From the outside looking in, much of this seems to violate The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Are there other ways to change these policies? Can you envision a blueprint?

It won’t be won legally. The Supreme Court has been gutting the Fourth Amendment in the name of the drug war since the early 1980s, and I don’t think there’s any reason to think the current Court will change any of that. The Posse Comitatus Act is often misunderstood. Technically, it only prohibits federal marshals (and, arguably, local sheriffs and police chiefs) from enlisting active-duty soldiers for domestic law enforcement. The president or Congress could still pass a law or executive order tomorrow ordering U.S. troops to, say, begin enforcing the drug laws, and it wouldn’t violate the Constitution or the Posse Comitatus Act. The only barrier would be selling the idea to the public.

September 12, 2011

The increasing militarization of the police

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Radley Balko shows how the tools given to the authorities to fight the war on terror have instead been used to further expand the war on drugs:

New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

It’s a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America’s police departments.

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs.” Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America’s drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

[. . .]

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, “Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

Update: Also from Radley, a look inside the SWAT team leader’s world.

[. . .] note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.

June 18, 2011

Some new vehicles for Afghan patrols

Filed under: Government, Law, Weapons — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Two competing designs:

Of course, they’re not really new vehicles for Afghanistan, but they may be used similarly.

June 13, 2011

Police SWAT teams under fewer restrictions than troops in Afghanistan

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:12

John W. Whitehead recounts the ongoing militarization of police and other non-military government agencies:

The militarization of American police — no doubt a blowback effect of the military empire — has become an unfortunate part of American life. In fact, it says something about our reliance on the military that federal agencies having nothing whatsoever to do with national defense now see the need for their own paramilitary units. Among those federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions are the State Department, Department of Education, Department of Energy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service, to name just a few. These agencies have secured the services of fully armed agents — often in SWAT team attire — through a typical bureaucratic sleight-of-hand provision allowing for the creation of Offices of Inspectors General (OIG). Each OIG office is supposedly charged with not only auditing their particular agency’s actions but also uncovering possible misconduct, waste, fraud, theft, or certain types of criminal activity by individuals or groups related to the agency’s operation. At present, there are 73 such OIG offices in the federal government that, at times, perpetuate a police state aura about them.

[. . .]

How did we allow ourselves to travel so far down the road to a police state? While we are now grappling with a power-hungry police state at the federal level, the militarization of domestic American law enforcement is largely the result of the militarization of local police forces, which are increasingly militaristic in their uniforms, weaponry, language, training, and tactics and have come to rely on SWAT teams in matters that once could have been satisfactorily performed by traditional civilian officers. Even so, this transformation of law enforcement at the local level could not have been possible without substantial assistance from on high.

What’s worse than the vast increase in the use of heavily armed police SWAT teams for law enforcement is the casual way the teams are used:

Ironically, despite the fact that SWAT team members are subject to greater legal restraints than their counterparts in the military, they are often less well-trained in the use of force than are the special ops soldiers on which they model themselves. Indeed, SWAT teams frequently fail to conform to the basic precautions required in military raids. For instance, after reading about a drug raid in Missouri, an army officer currently serving in Afghanistan commented:

     My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan. For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods.

Remember, SWAT teams originated as specialized units dedicated to defusing extremely sensitive, dangerous situations. As the role of paramilitary forces has expanded, however, to include involvement in nondescript police work targeting nonviolent suspects, the mere presence of SWAT units has actually injected a level of danger and violence into police-citizen interactions that was not present as long as these interactions were handled by traditional civilian officers.

June 10, 2011

Update on the “educational” SWAT team raid

Filed under: Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:06

There’s been a bit of clarification from the authorities, although what they reveal isn’t pretty:

The Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General served a warrant on Stockton, California resident Kenneth Wright at six in the morning on Tuesday. Though the initial story gave the impression that the raid was focused on unpaid student loans, the department’s press secretary helpfully informed us this was not the case, and that the office conducts investigations of bribery, fraud, and embezzlement.

That’s little comfort. A review of the warrant reveals that the investigators were searching for financial records connected with suspected financial aid fraud, conspiracy, theft of government funds, false statements to the government, and wire fraud. Wright wasn’t the suspect — his estranged wife was and she wasn’t present for the raid — but for this list of white collar crimes the agents breached the front door, dragged Wright and his three children from the home, and kept them in a police cruiser for hours (the children for two, Wright for over six).

Kenneth Wright’s gut reaction, captured on video, largely mirrors mine. Ridiculous. Someone may have lied on student loan paperwork, so federal investigators converged to kick in a door and keep a family in the back of a cruiser for hours when they could have simply knocked and served the warrant.

Of course, the stated reason for the raid isn’t likely the real one:

This raid was a tactical dog and pony show to justify the existence of the OIG’s office, timely executed as Republicans are sharpening their fiscal knives. The same bureaucratic survival instinct motivated the ATF’s raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The ATF needed a high-profile bust to justify its existence in the face of perennial budgetary scrutiny, scrutiny that is deserved now more than ever as ATF officials knowingly let guns get shipped across the Mexican border to support the cartels. Two turned up at the scene of the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent and others shot a Mexican military helicopter and forced it to land.

Update: Some useful commentary at Popehat:

Anton Chekov (no, not the Star Trek guy) said of writing drama, “one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

Law enforcement training and procurement follows a similar ethos: supply creates its own demand. If you buy fancy toys for cops of any stripe, and train them to use them, then they’re going to use them. Once law enforcement is equipped and trained to wield the hammer of paramilitary raids, then every search looks like a nail. [. . .] (I suspect there’s a Napoleonic phenomenon going on as well: in my experience as a former fed and current defense lawyer, the more petty an officer’s power, and the narrower his patch, the more he itches to exercise force and authority.) That’s how they get to the place where they think it’s appropriate to use this much force against an innocent citizen with no criminal record, and his family, because his ex was committing fraud

[. . .]

Searches can be unreasonable not just in their purpose or in their supporting probable cause, but in their execution. A paramilitary raid is a grotesquely disproportionate approach to the investigation of a non-violent crime. It poses a grave risk of accidental death. It terrorizes innocents. And it conditions both police and citizens to view any law enforcement inquiry as justifying overwhelming force. Things like loan fraud and illegal milk sales should not require shock and awe.

The bottom line: we need to be vigilant for government abuse of the application for and execution of search warrants as well as erosion of the use of search warrants.

June 9, 2011

Arizona’s First Police Armoured Division goes into action

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Earlier this year, facing a looming threat, with ordinary police procedures considered too ineffective, Arizona teamed up with Hollywood for a solution. Rather than sending a squad car to serve the warrant, Maricopa County unleashes the awesome armoured power of the 1st SS Panzer division police plus actor Steven Seagal:

We have previously followed the feudal system created by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona. Arpaio’s insatiable desire for media attention has led him to turn over areas of his office to Hollywood producers. Last week, Arpaio’s unhinged administration gave the public another bizarre scene as Steven Seagal was seen attacking a home with a tank, armored cars, bomb robot, and dozens of SWAT team members. The crime? Suspected involvement in cockfighting.

The police acknowledge that there was no evidence to suggest that the man was dangerous or that he was armed. He was indeed arrested without a struggle and no guns were found in the house. Well, without a struggle on his part. The armored Seagal attack blew its windows out and caused the neighborhood to think that an invasion was afoot. The huge operations (and its attendant costs) was basically a stage set up to give Seagal good footage for his reality program, “Lawman.” Seagal is shown riding in the tank in the assault on the suspected cockfighter.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

June 8, 2011

New tactic on delinquent student loans: SWAT teams

Filed under: Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Thinking about getting behind on paying back your student loan? Think again:

Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

After the public humiliation, he was then handcuffed and chucked into the back of a police car for 6 hours, along with his three young children. He’ll think twice before getting behind on his student loans, right?

Perhaps not: they weren’t even his loans: the SWAT team was looking for his estranged wife.

March 2, 2010

SWAT forces now spend more time doing non-SWAT policing

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

Or, more accurately, militarizing the sort of police activity that ordinary police officers would once have done:

. . . last year Maryland became the first state in the country to make every one of its police departments issue a report on how often and for what purpose they use their SWAT teams. The first reports from the legislation are in, and the results are disturbing.

Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. In Prince George’s County alone, with its 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once per day. According to a Baltimore Sun analysis, 94 percent of the state’s SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT teams were originally intended.

Worse even than those dreary numbers is the fact that more than half of the county’s SWAT deployments were for misdemeanors and nonserious felonies. That means more than 100 times last year Prince George’s County brought state-sanctioned violence to confront people suspected of nonviolent crimes. And that’s just one county in Maryland. These outrageous numbers should provide a long-overdue wake-up call to public officials about how far the pendulum has swung toward institutionalized police brutality against its citizenry, usually in the name of the drug war.

It’s easy to see how this happened, all over North America, not just in Maryland. Increasing perception of the dangers of the drug war fed the demand for more SWAT-type forces in more and more police departments. Once in place, extensively equipped and expensively trained, the police authorities needed to justify keeping these teams active and involved . . . that is, they couldn’t pay them to sit around waiting for a hostage-taking or a major drug bust. They needed those officers to be out doing things — preferably media-friendly “big” things.

Even in the most dangerous areas, there are only so many situations that rationally require the heavy hand of the fully-armed SWAT team, so the incentives were already in place to expand the role from the original (and relatively rare) combat-style deployment to other, less dangerous (but often more mediagenic) crime fighting.

Anyone in the army can tell you that even in wartime, the majority of soldiers don’t get shot at: they patrol, they train, they do various military and non-military activites. For policemen-as-combat-troops, there are even fewer chances to use all their expensive equipment and training. The temptation to use the SWAT team for less and less dangerous activities is overwhelming, which is why you get the lads and lasses in bullet-proof vests and army helmets appearing even for non-violent misdemeanor offenses.

The choices for law enforcement are not good: disband your SWAT team and run the risk of not having the resources on hand when you actually do need that kind of force, or stay the course, keep the SWAT team(s), and keep them busy so it doesn’t look like you’re wasting a big chunk of your annual budget on inessential services. The bureaucratic instinct is to avoid courses which carry a potential result that could reflect negatively on the organization — which is why you rarely hear about police departments giving up their SWAT teams.

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress