Posted on 08/27/2014 8:07:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Contrary to what you may have heard, the armored vehicles that appeared on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., during the unrest that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown did not come from the Pentagon. "Most of the stuff you are seeing in video coming out of Ferguson is not military," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Defense Department's press secretary, told reporters last week. "The military is not the only source of tactical gear in this country."
In other words: Don't blame the military for militarizing the police. Kirby has a point. Although the Pentagon has played a role by distributing surplus gear to police departments, so have the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security by providing grants that can be used to buy military-style equipment. In any case, the real problem, more pervasive and insidious than BearCats or MRAPs on the streets of our cities, is the dangerously misguided urge to transform cops into soldiers, as reflected in the promiscuous use of SWAT teams.
As the acronym implies, SWAT teams originally were intended for unusual threats requiring "special weapons and tactics," threats such as rioters, shooters, barricaded suspects and hostage takers. But what was once special is now routine. Today the most common use of SWAT teams, which are deployed something like 50,000 times a year in the U.S., is serving search warrants, typically in drug cases.
Looking at a sample of more than 800 SWAT operations carried out by 20 law enforcement agencies in 11 states during the past three years, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that 79 percent involved search warrants. More than three-quarters of the searches were looking for drugs.
These raids tend to follow the same basic pattern: Heavily armed, black-clad men enter a home early in the morning, while the occupants are asleep. The police often break down the door with a battering ram, shatter windows and toss in a flashbang grenade, an explosive device designed to discombobulate targets with a blinding light and deafening noise. If there is a dog in the home that barks at the invaders (as dogs tend to do), the police kill it.
The element of surprise and the overwhelming, terrifying show of force are supposed to minimize violence by forestalling any thought of resistance. It does not always work out that way.
Last December, a Texas marijuana grower named Henry Magee shot and killed a Burleson County sheriff's deputy who broke into his mobile home in the middle of the night along with eight other officers. Magee said he mistook Sgt. Adam Sowders for a burglar, and in February a grand jury declined to indict him in the deputy's death.
Six months before Magee shot Sowders, a similar mistake resulted in the death of Eugene Mallory, an 80-year-old retired electrical engineer who was shot in his bed because he grabbed a gun when armed men stormed into his home early in the morning. They were Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, looking for a nonexistent meth lab.
Last May, police in Habersham County, Ga., broke into a house in the middle of the night, looking for a meth dealer who no longer lived there. While attacking the house, the SWAT team tossed a flashbang grenade into a crib, severely burning a 19-month-old boy.
No drugs or weapons were found in that raid, which seems to be a pretty common outcome. In the ACLU study, records indicated that police found the drugs or guns they expected 35 percent of the time. The low rate of gun recovery is especially striking because the use of SWAT teams is supposedly justified by the prospect of facing armed and dangerous suspects.
The reckless use of paramilitary forces to attack the homes of unsuspecting civilians reflects a literalization of the war on drugs, as well as the unseemly eagerness of many police officers to dress up and act like soldiers. Taking away their BearCats will not solve those problems.
I think the headline writer meant profligate — not promiscuous— but the point is clear nonetheless.
Agreed! They are both militarized police; it compliments this idea that the soldiers serving as guards on USA bases are called MPs (for Military Police).
This is so. And the only way to fix it is to pierce the immunity shield that the judiciary has fabricated from whole cloth.
Cops who obtain warrants on flimsy or fabricated representations need to be personally liable - criminally and civilly.
Cops who execute no-knock warrants at the wrong address need to be personally liable - criminally and civilly.
Judges who issue warrants on flimsy or fabricated representations need to be personally liable - criminally and civilly.
No-knock warrants need to suffer strict scrutiny as to whether alternative means to accomplish the search or arrest could be employed. Again, with personal liability for both the cops and the issiung judge for use of excessive force.
The nascent totalitarian police state needs to be strangled.
Do SWAT members get paid more for their service?
Yes. SWAT gets additional “hazardous duty” pay, plus generous comp time.
Concur
........yes, I think the police some years ago made a wrong decision and went down the wrong road re SWAT implementation. They need to turn around, go back up the road to the fork and take the right road.
The right road I think is you don’t bust in to peoples houses in the middle of the night. The natural “instinct” of anybody, citizen or criminal, is to reach for a gun if you have one. I know I would.
SWAT needs to be employed ONLY in broad daylight where everybody knows what the hell is going on. Now the cops will complain that they lose the advantage of surprise and that that loss will cost lives (theirs). Well, that’s the conundrum for a SWAT team member isn’t it! Each individual SWAT team member will have to make that decision. But, they have proven over recent years that current policy permitting late night or early morning raids is also killing people! And in too many cases it is innocent civilians and children..................and dogs!
I think the writer wrote what he meant.
I often hear of “a few bad cops” giving all the others a bad name. The question then becomes; “Why don’t the good cops, turn in the bad cops?” The only comparison, and I will be the first to admit that it is an unfair one, is to Islam.
We are always told of the radical 10% that are the trouble makers, but we never hear anything from the other 90%, that rebukes the actions of the minority.
Same holds true of police, no matter how poorly or illegally an officer has acted, his brothers and sisters in blue will NOT speak up against him.
Another impediment to cleaning up law enforcement is that when an officer is found guilty of misconduct, the tax payers and not the officer are on the hook for any costs. The officer may lose their job, but the tax payer foots the bill.
So what can we do to fix this situation? Well as my old First Sergeant used to say; “Don’t complain unless you have a solution to the problem.” Well here is my idea.
Any and all monetary damages awarded to a plaintiff as a result of the actions of law enforcement officers, are to ONLY come from the offending departments or organizations pension fund.
Only when it hits home personally by weakening every officers retirement, will the good ones begin to turn in the bad ones. In time, department phycologists and training officers will do a better job of weeding out the nut jobs. Senior staff will do a better job of triple checking addresses before conducting a “no-knock” late night call to a suspect’s home. Officers will advise their partners that a course of action is not advised, rather than just going along.
And once this has happened, law enforcement might begin to gain some of the mountain of trust and respect that they have lost in past few years.
I completely agree...and be replaced by the roving crowds of armed, crazy 18 year old thugs who rob stores, beat up clerks, bash in cops’ heads, break down your front door and kill your dog (oops, that is only the cops who kill dogs). But, I like your “handcuff the evil LOE” and make certain that the Muslims are free to traffic children for sex-slavery and visit your neighborhood so you can hold hands and sing Kum-By-Yah. You’re going to love your brave new world.
Good post. Thank you.
I have often proposed that all public employees including law enforcement and fire protection be removed from ‘union’ collaboration, influence and any other such anti public status. However, I certainly will go for the/a first step to make any and all bad actions to be penalized at the union and personal retirement funding point.
You’re welcome
Good solution, if it can be implemented.
And, of course, there's no middle ground where a cop seeking a warrant has to attest, under pain of penalty, that their information is solid, they have the right address, there is no other way (such as, for example, simply surrounding and waiting); a middle ground where the judge issuing the warrant must swear, under pain of penalty, that he has thoroughly satisfied himself that the cop has presented a sufficiency of evidence as to circumstances and methods.
Per you, our only choices are to carte blanche cops firebombing babies in their cribs in the dark of night or letting vast mobs run wild in the streets.
>>Same holds true of police, no matter how poorly or illegally an officer has acted, his brothers and sisters in blue will NOT speak up against him.<<
There was an officer here on FR who said he has spoken up and all it resulted in was harassment coming back at him for not following the standard code of ethics, stand with your brother officer in blue, protect the blue line at all costs.
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