“Attacking innocent people with a goon squad is dangerous?”
You came into the conversation late and missed the point. I was responding to someone’s assertion that a SWAT team is even needed at all...not in relation to this case.
The police dept messed up here big time and needs to make amends. But there are circumstances when SWAT is needed given the danger of some criminals.
I once took a shooting course from Jim Cirillo, who had (at that time) been in more face-to-face armed shootouts (something like 17) with criminals than any other cop in the nation when he was a member of NYPD’s “Stakeout Squad.”
He didn’t have an especially high opinion of SWAT teams. As a taxpayer, neither do I. The record of SWAT teams from a taxpayer’s perspective is very poor. They’ve resulted in very high costs for very little upside or results, and in some communities, they’ve just resulted in tremendous pay-outs in lawsuits for damages, distress and wrongful deaths.
If these clowns want to play at being a special operator, then they can join the armed forces’ spec-ops group of their choice.
What is really needed here is a change in LEO recruiting. My first suggestion is to hire some people that know how to read, and use this skill at the appropriate time: before they execute a raid. If police departments would recruit better people and give their rank-and-file officers better training, there would be no need for SWAT teams.
A pretty grim indication of the state of LEO recruitment in this nation was seen in CT years ago, when an applicant was rejected for having too high an IQ:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E2DB143DF93AA3575AC0A96F958260
As for LEO’s that make false entry, or commit wrongful manslaughter serving a warrant: they should lose their sovereign immunity. The cause of these mistakes rests with the people making the raids, and the taxpayers should insist on strict liability falling upon the LEO’s involved and responsible, rather than tapping the taxpayer’s pocket to pay the damages in lawsuits.
In my town SWAT team use seems more designed to impress, or perhaps intimidate, the citizenry than to actually catch criminals.
Then how did we get along without them for so long??