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Rise of the Warrior Cop: How America's Police Forces Became Militarized
FuzzNugget writes "An awakening piece in the Wall Street Journal paints a grim picture of how America's police departments went from community officers walking the beat to full-on, militarized SWAT operations breaking down the doors of non-violent offenders. From the article: 'In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred [raids] a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005, there were approximately 50,000 raids.' It goes on to detail examples of aggressive, SWAT-style raids on non-violent offenders and how many have ended in unnecessary deaths. Last year, after a Utah man's home was raided for having 16 small marijuana plants, nearly 300 bullets in total were fired (most of them by the police) in the ensuing gunfight, the homeowner believing he was a victim of a home invasion by criminals. The U.S. military veteran later hanged himself in his jail cell while the prosecution sought the death sentence for the murder of one officer he believed to be an criminal assailant. In 2006, a man in Virginia was shot and killed after an undercover detective overheard the man discussing bets on college football games with buddies in a bar. The 38-year-old optometrist had no criminal record and no history of violence. The reports range from incredulous to outrageous; from the raid on the Gibson guitar factory for violation of conservational law, to the infiltration of a bar where underage youth were believed to be drinking, to the Tibetan monks who were apprehended by police in full SWAT gear for overstaying their visas on a peace mission. Then there's the one about the woman who was subject to a raid for failing to pay her student loan bills. It's a small wonder why few respect police anymore. SWAT-style raids aren't just for defense against similarly-armed criminals anymore; it's now a standard ops intimidation tactic. How much bloodshed will it take for America to realize such a disproportionate response is unwarranted and disastrous?"
As a Brit, the stuff I read about the cops in the USA freaks me out, maybe because of the relative lack-of-guns here.
I read articles saying even your tax collectors are doing armed raids on houses, is this right? It seems like something from a Terry Gilliam film, nightmare-ish.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Dan Carlin does a great podcast on this subject http://dancarlin.com/disp.php/csarchive episode 232
Cheye Calvo, then mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD: His crime was bringing a package inside his home. It turned out that this was a package of pot that the police had been tracking and put on his porch, and as soon as the package was inside the SWAT team stormed his house, shooting his dogs, nearly shooting his mother-in-law (cue jokes), no knocking or announcing. It turned out that the only reason that the package had been addressed to his home was that some drug dealer had gotten his wife's name and address at random, and then have the local UPS delivery guy just take the packages to whoever was really supposed to get them. There was also an obvious entrapment issue, as Calvo would never have seen the package without the police putting it there.
Nowadays Calvo spends most of his time traveling the country giving talks about out of control SWAT teams. He also points out that there are lots of people who this happens to that nobody paid attention to because they were poor and/or not-white, rather than relatively well-to-do, white, and the local mayor.
I am officially gone from
As occupational hazards are concerned, Law Enforcement isn't even particularly high on the list. What happened to you is unfortunate, but is not especially common. If police cruisers came with grenade launchers and they blew up every car they pulled over then it would be even more rare, but I think we've long passed "eye for an eye" and are now looking at a situation where cops kill more people than people kill cops.
Years - and people wonder why the police are militarized, why violence is prevelant, why mass shootings happen, why bombings happen. It is because our culture is one of death and destruction, because 'merica. Endless war has done this, the value of life is nonexistent in our government.
I am the victim of a Police SWAT which happened in 2007. I lost my (food svc.) job at the time. When it happened I was visiting with a couple of neighbors in my apartment. The police at the time did not read a Miranda warning, and called the judge to obtain a warrant and permission to hold trial right there. After being asked a few innocuous questions, I was taken to the local hospital behavioral medicine unit. The police were frantic, and I believe this took place on a Sunday night. The Landlord had indicated I was going to be evicted, but IIRC I was well within the allotted time-frame to prepare to move. A number of years have passed since that time. Only a few years ago, a thief broke the lock on my storage unit and stole a few computers and most everything I had except my books and files. I am and was nonviolent. I am not and was not addicted to any drug, and I had not drunk nor smoked. I did not shout nor yell. The above happened in the freedom-loving community of Provo, Utah.
I used to be a pizza delivery guy in Niagara Falls, NY. I've delivered pizza to places with crack and guns on the table in the living room. Let me know when you've been standing in front of a cracked out gangbanger with hundreds in your pocket and nothing to defend yourself with but a 2 liter of diet coke. Yeah, that's what I thought.
The cops are taking steroids. There's no stigma against it like in pro sports, but just as much pressure to perform. You all know there are many performance enhancing drugs, not just steroids but even something as simple as ritalin or adderal. Cops have easy access, too.
I'd like to see random drug testing of cops, and drug testing of cops following these ridiculous events where they fire hundreds of rounds for no particular reason other than that all the other trigger-happy cops are firing. You can't substitute calm, rational peace-keeping with hyped-up cops over-compensating for their tiny guns.
We need to raise awareness of cops who are pulling a Lance Armstrong.
TFA says NASA has its own SWAT. "Along with the formidable force of standard security at Kennedy, a highly trained and specialized group of guardians protect the Center from would-be troublemakers. They are the members of the Kennedy Space Center Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and they mean business. " http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/swat_feature.html
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Mostly because a large number of cops act like complete assholes.
Officers should be forced to be courteous and professional at all times. They speed off duty? Instantly fired. The problem is that most cops act like they are above the law and treat EVERYONE as a threat.
Reduce the number of assholes in uniform, and you will reduce or reverse the decline of the public image of the police.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is actually an example of this. There is a neighborhood in Fayetteville NC, called Bonie Dune. Any time police would send cars, for any reason, they would get shot at from a lot of the houses, but the ambulances went in without molestation. the local swat decided it would be a good idea to use an ambulance to go in and conduct a raid, and I think you can see where this is going, now the ambulances get shot at and cant go into the area.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
In a country where nearly anybody can be armed and the media idolizes the tough guy of course Law Enforcement is going to do more heavily armed raids. As a limited peace officer (conservation) I have received threats just walking down the street on my day off by an armed (CCW) local dipshit (no more CCW for him). The easy way to avoid the cops breaking down your door is don't break the law. Nobody has ever broken down my door - but then again I don't grow dope, run a betting ring, skip paying my taxes, hack government data systems or kill endangered species for fun. The cops are armed because the population is - the cops will always have more guns otherwise they can't do their job.
I think the "shock and awe" SWAT tactics just reveal an underlying fear in the police that they could deal with the situation any other way. I guess this is what you get if you have a society where everyone may have a gun and be willing to use it on unwanted visitors, so the default setting of society is excessive violence. Reminds me of that South Park animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDCh4-pKrrE -- America was built on scared people (running away from Europe on the Mayflower -- don't blame me, South Park folks said it), and has continued in that great scared tradition (excessive military, excessive foreign intervention, excessive fear of others in society, excessive use of guns, etc, etc). Probably better to rewind 400+ years and try again.
I remember a while back (this was in the nineties) watching a small Hispanic boy running in a supermarket in downtown L.A.and suddenly stopping to look up in stunned silence at a very large man dressed in dark clothes,. One of L.A.'s finest.
You know what that cop said to the little kid (he couldn't have been more than four years old)?
"Do I scare you?"
Right there and then I thought to myself: something very wrong with this man, something very wrong with the police in this town.
Hello US citizens, I'm an Egyptian engineer, seeing my country falling apart due to the too deep police/security engagement into a broad aspects of life. They control clubs, universities, magazines, TV channels, governmental careers,...and the list goes on. I wish for you to control your police playground limits, and hit hard whenever they cross it. Don't wait for too much blood, don't wait before it's too late. Salam.
Strawman, no one is claiming cops come to a house unarmed, but they dont need a swat team in 99% of the cases they use them.
"I find this whole subject silly in that we are making out police to be the evil" Some police are evil, no one is making them all to be evil, no one is even making out the vast majority of them to be evil. But some ARE evil.
"Where in the world do the police go around with no guns?" Define your statement a little better, no guns as in any cops dont carry? If that is the case then easy, last I checked UK has beat cops that cary sticks instead of guns. In any case you have us on a red herring. No one is claiming cops should not cary guns, but they should not have a team of 20, in full riot gear, with fully auto machine guns, knocking on the door to serve summons and warrents to non violent offenders.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. 18 during Waco.
So you are incorrect. I started getting interested in police issues in the mid-2000s.
You might start by Googling the name "Cory Maye."
I don't see that as being necessarily true. There are obviously plenty of poster cases already to point to to get people to care about it. Military style police equipment is expensive, those who don't care about innocent people being torn to shreds by police might care that it was their tax dollars being used to do it.
From my perspective, we could be at the point where a straw could break the camel's back, where one viral video of a "legal" home invasion and manslaughter could start the process.
I'm not saying I think that's about to happen. In fact, I really doubt it. Just you state it like a certainty. People are rarely good at predicting when revolutions are going to happen or are not going to happen.
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. I was 18 during Waco.
So you're assertion that I only got interested in police issues after white people were raided is incorrect.
I got interested in this issue in the mid-2000s. You might Google the name "Cory Maye."
And you should really know what you're talking about before you imply racial motives to someone you don't know. Especially when there's very public information available to contradict you.
I got stopped for not pulling over when they flashed lights, which I couldn't see because my mirrors and back window were fogged (no working defrost, sadly) and I was driving under traffic lights and streetlights, which meant my whole back window was flashing anyway. I got two guns pointed at my face and I got to sit on the curb for an hour in the cold with no shoes on (hey, it's legal in Santa Cruz to drive without them) while they rummaged through it and found nothing whatsoever. This was nearly twenty years ago now. And they had pulled me over for nothing whatsoever. I hadn't sped, run lights, et cetera. They just didn't like the look of my '83 Citation on the road at 2AM. Neither did I, but it's no justification for a traffic stop.
I don't even have to imagine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sorry, no. America was imperialistic long before the Pearl Harbor attack. Go read about the invasion of the Phillipines, the Spanish-American war, and the Banana Wars. Don't forget the Barbary Wars. America has been big into foreign intervention since the early 1800s.
"It's probably news because white people are being raided now, whereas previously it was only scary black people like Fred Hampton who got murdered by militarized police."
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. I was 18 during Waco.
So you're assertion that I only got interested in police issues after white people were raided is incorrect.
I got interested in this issue in the mid-2000s. You might Google the name "Cory Maye."
And you should really know what you're talking about before you imply racial motives to someone you don't know. Especially when there's very public information available to contradict you.
I have awaken from my near-decade-long Slashdot slumber to rebut the attempted race-baiting of Radley Balko.
Radley Balko is the type of person who calls out injustice, individual and institutional, regardless of who it impacts. And has done so for a long time.
Radley Balko is also the kind of person who has spent hundreds of hours of his personal time meeting with, writing about, agitating for the release of, and providing assistance to, wrongfully-accused defendants... most of whom, in my thirty seconds of scanning the 'net, are black.
"Google Corey May." Classic. Well done, sir.
Radley Balko is a goddamn American Hero.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Before things improve, they will get worse.
I strongly disagree.
Militarization weakens democracy, a weakened democracy disregards personal freedoms, threatened personal freedoms make people feel unsafe, people feeling unsafe support militarization, and the cycle goes that way, snowballing, until the military realize they're stronger than the government and BOOM! A coup happens. (It's what happened with most Latin American countries, by the way.)
So, if you still want to see things improved, you shouldn't wait it to get worse, else it'll be too late.
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
When my 11 year old son was handcuffed in middle school for being autistic while following the IEP, the school was held accountable and we were made whole with respect to their actions. Our lawyer, however, told us not to pursue the officer. She was concerned that our son would be charged with assault and resisting arrest if we went to the prosecutor. She also told us about the "Blue Wall" that protects officers involved in even the most egregious misconduct.
Our son was covered in bruises, especially around the neck. The security camera footage from two angles clearly demonstrated the brutality of the officer applying positional asphyxiation and twisting his arm around far enough to see his opposite wrist visible from the other side of his back.
I arrived after 45 minutes and the cuffs were immediately removed. We left the school 15 minutes later after my son calmed down enough to travel.
The same officer had also arrested another student at school for running away from home the following day. The department refused all FOIA requests, and stonewalled at every turn. So we gave up and withdrew our son from their school for his safety. This same child is now an honor student at another district and has completed advanced placement classes several grades ahead of schedule.
The media don't have a concern to call out police overreach because frankly, they rely on police for 90% of their reporting. If you don't have a source to start the story, you're out. If you don't have a source to confirm the story, you're out. And if you question what the police tell you, you don't have a source anymore.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/09/misconduct-is-only-news-when-journalists-say-it-is/
http://www.popehat.com/2012/03/21/chelsea-kay-of-krcr-tv-supports-shooting-being-a-lapdog/
http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/12/a-brief-story-illustrating-my-view-of-law-enforcement-and-the-media-that-covers-it/
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
I don't think the lawmakers actually told the police to kill anyone found betting in a bar. The basis of law is that one group makes the laws, one group brings suspected law-breakers to court, and another independent group figures out if these suspects are guilty and if so what the punishment should be.
What the US has is one group making the laws, one group killing and beating anyone they don't like the look of, and a court system with insanely long punishments for all classes of crime and a pro-police bias.
If we do not like this, we could always repeal the second amendment and get the semi-automatic guns out of the general population. There would be less reason to carry out raids with such a show of force. Until then, we have the society which we have sown.
How did America's policy forces become militarized? The second amendment.
the people they're supposed to be raiding would still have guns.. and you didn't have this amount of raids back when full auto weapons were legal in USA... despite having prohibition gangsters going around at the same time.
but it's actually real simple. if you invest in a swat team you're going to use that swat team.. it's just good use of money... but if you use them as a swat team that doesn't announce it's presence when starting the raid(no door knocks and waiting and serving the warrant) for cases that would have been previously handed like normal warrant searches of course the amount of times things go fucked is going to grow. so cities which have swat teams are assigning them searches that shouldn't be handled by swat teams - and the swat teams handle of course every case as seriously as any other case because "that's just smart", even if the proper procedure for that case would be acting completely differently.
what's worse is of course the same clowns then moonlighting giving home defense courses on how you should shoot home invaders! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Shortly after the arrest in the Boston bombing, I was talking with some co-workers and made a comment about the shutdown of an entire city being overkill. Everyone seemed to think I was nuts. I've even had someone say to be "Freedom and liberty are good, but security has to come first".
I don't know how well this represents the larger population as most of the people I was talking to were both immigrants and females. I live in a pretty diverse area and I've found that immigrants in general seem to have a huge problem understanding the concept of freedom.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.