Posted on 04/24/2011 3:27:11 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
You know where this is going. They got the wrong guy. Someone else had used Covert’s wireless connection to download child porn.
Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale.
It sure is. I can certainly think of some lessons we might draw. One might be: Maybe the cops should check to see if a suspect’s wireless network is secure, and therefore that they have the right guy, before they break into his home and point their guns at his head.
Another lesson: Maybe it’s not such a good idea to send the SWAT team after someone suspected of downloading—not even manufacturing—child porn in the first place. Are people who download kiddie porn known to be heavily armed?
As you might suspect, these aren’t the lessons the police drew from their violent, mistaken raid on Barry Covert. This is:
Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
Probably good advice, given that they don’t seem particularly concerned about their own mistakes in this case.
(Excerpt) Read more at theagitator.com ...
I'd love to see this expense eliminated at the local level. At worst, most local police departments could share a SWAT team.
anyone looking for kiddie porn deserves to be shot.
Perhaps they should get their own house in order...
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/child-porn-search-focuses-on-top-miami-ice-agent-24875843
Maybe we must rethink the law and policy that uses SWAT for this level of law enforcement. This only happens because the average citizen doesn’t protest loudly about the mission creep of military-police. And the average citizen doesn’t care too much until it is their home that is raided in the middle of the night, especially when the police have the wrong address and shoot the family dog in the process.
But that is OK because the police were “just doing what they are trained to do”, as if rigorous training makes the tyranny just a routine matter.
Covert is the lawyer and not the guy raided.
Big thread on this here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2709799/posts?q=1&;page=1
Does that include capping 14 year old girls in the back of the head?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTu7y5De3Cc
You must feel so proud of yourself, internet tough guy.
Well, there is a really good reason for that, one that was actually pointed out by one of the nations leading SWAT Team Training Units Bob O'Brien, who writes at Police One Magazine.
He pointed to the FBI statistics of violent crimes reported and investigated, the number of emergency SWAT callouts, verses the actual number of SWAT reported raids and the reason for such raids.
He showed where nationwide round 3% of the total yearly SWAT operations were for actual violent crimes such as active shooters, hostage situation and other such crimes where one can clearly see the need for such a group.
The most common use for SWAT Teams were for search warrants and drug raids where first time offenders were targeted and the most common results was either nothing being found in the search or misdemeanor amounts of dope.
And as Radley Balko points out SWAT TEams are 15 times more likely to kill someone during a raid than to have a member of the team even assaulted much less killed.
You have a point to a degree. However, how often would the news report SWAT doing a good job? To some level eliminating them here and there might be good, but I think better management when and where they go might be better.
So much for the court system then huh?
Hope you get wrongfully accused of downloading child porn or any crime for that matter... bet you'd change your tune real fast...
And first, if you read the article you'd of seen he wasn't looking at child porn, he was falsely accused...
why would you even use a swat team for this? ridiculous over militarization of the police force.
I went wardriving once in a nearby town (about 70,000) just to see what I got.
Picked up on average 2-5 wireless nets per block.
About 50% unencrypted.
SHUT UP AND OBEY CITIZEN!!!
How dare you question the use of brute military force against an innocent man!!!
ICE. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“You almost never hear about them going after actual violent, dangerous criminals these days.”
You can say that about practically all law enforcement. For some reason they are especially yellow with fear of illegal aliens.
No, they should be eliminated precisely because they are mismanaged and underused. We as citizens should not be subject to the whims of some wacko local police agency who wants to "play Army."
If there was a jurisdiction that had a level of violent crime that was able to justify the need for these paramilitary organizations, and said SWAT teams were used to suppress such criminal activity, then yes I'd agree that they'd be needed in such a place. But when we see these SWAT teams used in the types of ways we often read about, that just makes the case that they are not needed.
I am also openly questioning just how often the "child porn" excuse is used to arrest or otherwise harass people.
I notice that your sig line says “The Right to Life came before the Right to Happiness”.
Are you happy after killing someone whom you happened to, one day, sort of think, ya know, like, uhn, might be looking for “child porn” whatever that is?
Sort of, like, uhn, you know, hypocritical? Don’t you think?
There was an article that appeared last year in USAToday which more or less said that "child porn" had become the new throw down gun for cops.
Not that they were planting it on peoples computers during the raids but that the dope search warrants were being written in such a way that covered any computer devices on the premisses. And what the cops were actually doing was looking though peoples internet history for ANY PORN.
They were finding pictures of females who it turns out were actually models in their mid to late twenties that were petite in size, small to no breasts and shaved genitalia.
These models and their pictures were appearing on various web sites such as Hustler and even Penthouse. The cops without any further investigation was copying the files, seizing the computers and charging people with child porn.
But once the feds got involved and checked the pics they were found to NOT be child porn and the charges were dropped. But by then the damage is already done, your name is in the paper, mugshot and all under the big caption "CHILD PORN ARREST"...
Its just yet another point to be made that the cops are indeed part of the problem and not part of the solution.
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