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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?"
Before things improve, they will get worse.
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."
Full disk encryption. & Call my attorney.
Do not talk to police without an attorney.
...you have nothing to fear, right?
At least that is what the early proponents for increased surveillance and by extension armament of the police forces kept saying.
It is the lawmakers and the police that keeps escalating trivial issues to full out combat.
They did it during the occupy demonstrations as well. Kept battering peaceful demonstrations wearing riot gear, then go nuclear when someone had the audacity to tell them to stop.
It is a disgrace.
If there are no checks and balance to stop this from happening, then over the years it will creep forward slowly getting worse. Imagine being stopped for slightly speeding, you have your family in the car and the officer approaches with gun drawn, nice thought that... The police will say they do it to protect themselves, overwhelming force...perhaps sometimes it does go their way, other times it will not.
Yes, don't forget Poland!
On a related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCzT4njsyH4
Fuck yeah.
Violent crime in the US is occurring at the lowest rate in my lifetime and still declining rapidly. There are some, I'm sure, who would say that SWAT teams are a contributing factor to that. I'm skeptical of that claim. I would argue instead that declining violent crime rates make SWAT teams irrelevant. The wasted money alone is reason enough to quit using them; the number of extra-judicial "accidental" killings is a stronger reason.
I've lived in the Boston metro area for over 15 years, and the only incident I've seen or heard about that justified use of a SWAT team was the apprehension of the marathon bombing suspects. Frankly, something that we need that rarely, we would be better off without. Let the governor call out the National Guard when the threat to public safety is enough to justify military force.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
These raids being discussed above are to get the populace to accept them as normal, and to eventually get immediate compliance and prostration on "routine" raids in the future. Then disarming people, or shooting them, "for their own good" so that "misunderstandings" don't happen in "routine" raids in the future. These early raids will weed out those who will resist, as they ramp up eventually they'll get everyone who would resist.
People think there are sheep and wolves. Truth is there are sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. The job of the wolf is to get the sheep to fear the sheep dog - and it's working. The sheep dog is the biggest threat to the wolf, and the wolves are systematically weeding them out.
A near miss.
Nowhere near a miss.
My thoughts on that one.
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In Auburn, WA a corrections officer was seeking another person. The DOC officer and King County police shot an unarmed man (Theoharis), the officers later claiming say they thought he (Theoharis) was reaching for a gun, though no weapons were found in the room.The independent review also found evidence the sheriff's office was more interested in advocating for its officers than uncovering the facts behind the shooting.
3 things 1. This site does not cover only tech, part of the stuff that matters. Even still if you wanted to argue it there is plenty of tech going into these militarized police. 2. When you became a cop you knew what you were getting into. You knew it was a dangerous field and this goes into number 3 3. You swore an oath to uphold the constitution. To violate it, like in this way, should mean instant termination, and jail time.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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
You got shot for investigating what the founding fathers called "gardening". That's what's truly f***end up about your story.
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.
The police are increasingly regarded with fear and distrust, which insulates them from the community they work in, which makes their behaviour in turn more aggressive and antagonistic. This widens the gap to the point where the police are not a part of a community, but something that oppresses it.
History has proven that a lot of people are happy to mistreat or kill or torture others, assuming they see the other as an "enemy".
The Warrior Cop seems to me to be not just a result of militarisation, but politicalisation. Cops are told again and again they are fighting wars against drugs, or terrorism, or crime, and unsurprisingly they turn into a war making institution. Not only that, but an institution that sees everyone as an enemy.
This seems to me a result of consistently electing lawmakers who are too fucking stupid for words.
All you needed to do was watch the coverage when they were trying to get the other Boston Marathon bomber. As far as I could tell they literally had thousands of these basically soldiers running around which was surreal to me given that they were trying to catch one guy.(Who had some homemade bombs and a pistol.) I think I saw FBI, CIA, ATF, plus Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston police soldiers. I mentioned to my brother if anything this would only encourage more terrorism since basically 2 guys for probably well under a $1000 shut down at least 3 cities and probably induced a cost in the several hundreds of millions. Oh and the worst part, they didn't even catch the guy. BTW should I mention even libertarian with conservative leaning sites like instapundit think this is horseshit?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
which, in turn, stems from the stance of the government. The Second Amendment isn't about deer hunting or self-defense, per se, it's about being able to overthrow your government when you need to, as the guys who wrote it had just done.
This massive military government was never envisioned - the Army was only to be able to be stood up for two years at a time.
It's a failing of the highest order, and makes the People less safe. The answer to "does the Second Amendment allow people to own a nuclear weapon" is clearly, "if that's a problem then the government should get rid of its nuclear weapons."
A constant escalation by both sides cannot end well. Actually, just that we have 'two sides to the conflict' is damning evidence enough.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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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.
One other pressure is that being a cop can be pretty boring. Wrestling drunks, traffic patrol, walking/driving the beat, arguing with crazy people. Then you have the relative lack of genuine promotion opportunities most communities only need a tiny number of detectives or major crimes investigators. Plus the reality is that via tickets issued and petty crime prevention being high priorities for most local governments, they don't really want many cops to be anything but uniforms driving marked units.
So then comes along SWAT. With the occasional columbine the cops are able to convince the local politicians that they don't want to be caught with their pants down. Internally they wont meet much resistance because who doesn't want to play soldier and act all tough. You get to do cool training (pit maneuvers, kicking down doors, and lots of shooting). Basically action hero stuff; who didn't become a cop without at least a small hero fantasy in the back of their brain.
But then the last factor is that most police departments are by nature separate from the politicians. This is sort of a requirement otherwise politicians could too easily interfere with investigations "I can vouch for him personally, he would never do anything like that, I think you should drop it, Now." Plus the police need to be able to distribute their resources as they see fit. Again the politicians would distribute the policing according to political needs which would generally be very different than distributing the resources for crime prevention.
But the real question becomes one of authoritarianism vs libertarianism. This is the true divide in North America, not left wing and right wing. There are those who believe that we should be exposed to no risk and aim to impose some kind of perfect Disney society. They believe that with enough rules that this society can be achieve. The war on terror and the war on drugs are perfect examples of this. Yet the simple measure of the impossibility of this would be maximum security prisons these places are full of drugs and violence. If near 100% removal of liberty and relentless monitoring can not work in these facilities, what hope is there outside in "free" society? Bizarrely the various police agencies are slowly turning "free" society into those very failed prisons.
This sort of behavior often has many unintended consequences. This us against them mentality might first pervade the police but it then pervades the public. You end up with a public who stop cooperating with the police as a rule thinking that any cooperation will be used against them. This significantly reduces the usefulness of the police while reinforcing their mentality of us against them.
But then this feedback loop seems to get worse. The authoritarianism begins to spread to the legal system where you get angry prosecutors and hanging judges trying to prove that the system still works. The politicians are then harangued to make the penalties stiffer and stiffer as toleration of any libertarian policies would be to admit failure.
But luckily fantasy can only hold out so long against reality and as we are seeing a few jurisdictions have effectively eliminated their marijuana penalties. The world did not come to an end. Money is being save and lives aren't being ruined. But the authoritarian types are still desperate to hit people with sticks. So they are now making DUI laws where you will test positive a week or more after smoking up. Also these involve taking a blood sample. A fairly invasive and nasty privilege to give to the police.
So my suggestion is to fight fire with fire. New fundamental laws need to be put into place that will severely punish any members of the legal system who violate people's rights. There should be a people's jury that can be called that can permanently remove from office any official who is accused of abusing rights (judges, police, prosecutors). Freedom of information laws should be massively strengthened to the point where when a FOI request is issued that the officials will place it at the top of their todo list with little recourse to say no. Information is truely the lever of power and by giving information back to the people the people will regain the power that is rightfully theirs.
I have a question for the police chiefs around the country. When an officer conducting a raid "accidentally" shoots an unarmed person, why are there no consequences for that incident? It would seem to me, someone who will accidentally pull the trigger during a raid is exactly the kind of person who should not be trusted to participate in raids.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Well he was right. The US Constitution had to be amended to prohibit alcohol, as the Federal Government did not have that power. It was repealed. Nothing was added to the Constitution to give it the power to prohibit ditch weed, or anything else of the sort. The whole War on Drugs is illegal - at least if the Constitution is still in effect.
When people swear to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic, these are the domestic ones they're talking about. I'm saddened that this veteran saw death as his only way out.
Somebody in DC thinks we're better off now then we were before, when he had 16 plants in his house.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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3.Well we can start with the 4th amendment if you like ;
Right to feel secure in your persons. Right against unreasonable searches and seizes.
But there is also the right to privacy.,
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
I'm surprised the (otherwise excellent) article neglected to include the Cato Institute's map of botched paramilitary police raids.
This really is a serious problem. I teach home defense along with my concealed weapon permit classes, and the question always comes up "If someone is breaking into my house, how do I know if it's the police?" The answer, of course, is that you can't know, but if you guess wrong it could cost you your life. Good luck.
In my opinion, raids are simply too risky to be justified unless there's an imminent threat to an innocent's life. The reason for using aggressive entry tactics in the vast majority of cases is to prevent the destruction of evidence. That's simply not a good enough reason the kind of high-risk situation the aggressive tactics produce.
I think there are very rare circumstances in which SWAT really is appropriate, and we should scale SWAT capabilities appropriately. Perhaps each US state should have a single group of state troopers who form such an elite force, and are equipped with transportation that allows them to respond quickly anywhere in the state. A big, populous state like California may need two or three such units. But when every podunk PD has its own SWAT team, their mere existence is going to guaranteed that they get used for all sorts of other things. They're too expensive, and too cool (to the police), to just leave sitting around all the time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Given free reign, most authoritarians will opt for the most egregious display of power they can muster. Their goal is to intimidate all who might question or oppose them, even within their own ranks or among their allies. Of course, such as an Edward Snowden is to be nipped in the bud. Furthering this agenda is the fact that SWAT teams burn huge amounts of money on each outing, requiring larger budgets and thereby aggregating more power to the commanders. It is a vicious circle owned and managed by those who profit from it. Unfortunately, that condition has developed in many of society's institutions, such as Wall Street or Congress.
Next time, carry a pack of Mentos with that Diet Coke and maybe you'll have a chance.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Ruby Ridge and Waco, examples contradicting your race baiting.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.
More murderous as compared to when? Crime rates have been falling in this country for years.
They are tired of being shot at ... there is safety in numbers ... I'm a medically retired cop ... who was shot in the line of duty while investigating a massive marijuana grow ... I was alone.
It sounds like you're talking about the opposite extreme. No reasonable person is going to complain about sending several officers when there is a potentially dangerous situation. Personally I'd complain if they didn't. But there is an enormous difference between that and sending fully militarized SWAT teams in under situations that clearly don't warrant it.
I wonder if the SWAT teams don't make things more dangerous for the police, especially in the long run. If you know you may come up against a military assault team, it's tempting to arm yourself likewise. Unless perhaps you're wanted for murder or something, the dumbest thing you can do is shoot a cop. I know many criminals aren't the brightest of people, but if military assault teams weren't the norm even they might come to realize that. Hey Charlie, you may do some time for growing pot or jacking cars, but it's a lot less time than for shooting a cop.
Arms races go both ways, and I suspect that this militarization, in addition to making police lose the respect of the public, ultimately may make things more dangerous for the police.
It's an occupational hazard, the sort that is greatly amplified by stupid management. In your case, it seems a bit idiotic to send one man, alone, to investigate a "massive" marijuana grow. As idiotic as sending a dozen officers wielding submachine guns to get an unarmed optometrist who used to bet $50 with his friends.
That was the 1990s, which was coincidentally exactly the time that libertarians like Radley Balko got interested in police violence.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I served in Iraq. I know what it feels like to be under threat of death daily. Instead of a crazy crack head every so often, I dealt with roadside bombs, mortars, and snipers. Daily.
I disagree with you in the utmost.
If you are too scared to do your job without violating peoples rights, then you should not be doing the job. In fact the whiny attitude that you have about wanting drones and more officers because then you would be "whole" Just proves that you were never fit for the job to start with.
Lets say that all police officers are 100% honest and honorable (HAH!) We then trust them with equipment that allows them to violate rights at will. (Drones, license plate camera with massive storage, etc) This is not a problem because of how honest they all are. What happens when those honest cops get replaced with dirty cops. We have given the dirty cops the ability to violate our own rights.
This is compounded because cops never rat each other out. It is one big circle jerk that falls back to the old canard that the dirty cops just wanted to make sure they went home every night.
If the police actually monitored themselves, and kept their own house clean I would not worry about them having powerful new technology. As long as "clean" cops protect dirty ones, I think poorly of all police officers, and do not trust them.
I will again reiterate. If you are too scared to do the job, then find a new profession. I do not want you to be scared after all.
Ohh and the pro weed argument. You will hear it. The ban on weed it an over reach of the state. What right does the state have to tell me what I can and cannot put into my own body. In fact I feel that federal regulations on it are an inherently unconstitutional abuse of the commerce clause.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dont try to turn this into a left vs right. This has been happening just as much under the right.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
And that's a big part of the point. Even if all the cops had noble intentions, these raid create volatile situations where things can go wrong that needn't have. Therefore these raid tactics should only be used when truly necessary.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Why do SWAT teams wear black? It may seem like a small point, but when designing uniforms symbolism and psychological effect are certainly considered. When I see a black uniform the first thing I think of is Gestapo. I'm sure that I'm not the only one. What other uniforms are black?
Don't say it's for camouflage, as any solid color is bad camo. Even at night straight black is far from the best - that was known as least as far back as WWII. The standard, and immediately recognizable, color for (local) police uniforms in this country has always been dark blue. State police and sheriffs deputies may wear grey or khaki. Recognizability is useful - that's why certain brands of products have "trademark" colors. It says much that they want black associated with SWAT.
The problem(in addition to the effects on the public being 'protected and served') is that this sort of disproportionate force isn't even a positive development for officer safety.
Doing no-knock full SWAT raids probably improves safety against people who are willing to shoot police; but those people are relatively rare: shooting at cops is risky, and you have to be guilty of a lot before you won't notice the additional jail time. Against people who wouldn't ordinarily be motivated to shoot police, though, it's performing a very convincing violent home invasion(a situation where a great many more people would consider shooting to be a reasonable thing to do) for no good reason. Overwhelming force might usually mean that the resident loses; but you only have to get unlucky once.
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.
When you have 50,000 raids a year
That's the problem right there. Violent crime rates are on par with the 1950s and they had no where near as many raids as we do now, even on a per capita basis.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Most of the bad trends tend to drift in here from the US and this is one.
Then borrow one of our better ideas and declare independence.
"In God we trust" ... not. Power is what you should worship, whether it is cars, money or guns. Power can solve all your problems. America has granted the individual the illusion of personal sovereignty in the full knowledge they can no more exercise it than fly to the moon.
So there are lots of guns, and the cop gangs carry lots more guns just in case. But in practice there's no "just in case" and SOP is to go in with maximum suppressive cover.
It's no surprise stuff like this happens given the parameters the system has been setup with. And there's no easy way back, because of grass-roots indoctrination of the *illusion*. Stupidity and aggression are easy bedfellows.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
That actually makes doing SWAT-style raids a worse idea most of the time. If there are lots of people with guns(but, by the numbers, not a lot of people interested in shooting police officers), playing 'armed home invasion' and trusting that superior force will keep you from getting shot, rather than just, say, telling everyone to come outside, is a risky strategy.
Notice how swat usage skyrockets within a decade of the US Army replacing the M14 with the M16, a true assault rifle.
The M-14 was a fully automatic weapon that fired a large 7.62x51mm cartridge. By comparison the M-16 is a pop gun firing a 5.56x45mm cartridge. They switched because the M-14 and its ammo are heavy. Many people who were around at the time objected because they felt the M-16 lacked firepower.
theoretical is 875-1000 rpm for the M16
Actually they slowed it down a little to 850rpm to reduce fouling, but either way with a 30 round magazine you can't fire for long at that rate. Modern versions are limited to 3 round bursts for just that reason.
BTW, in the 1920's civilians could freely buy fully automatic weapons like BAR's and Tommy guns, so your screed about the choice of weapons makes no sense. You should also note that the military has a different job than the police.
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 thought everyone who watched a Warner Bros cartoon knew that - if you can see the big hole at the end, you are being threatened.
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
...until the degree of brutality reaches to levels that everyone can see.
Which takes us back to the final sentence of TFS:
How much bloodshed will it take for America to realize such a disproportionate response is unwarranted and disastrous?"
Trouble is, what everybody can see and what can be done about it are two different things. If you have a State that is content to say FUCK YOU, then, well, you're fucked. It really doesn't make any difference whether or not you protest, the behaviour will remain the same. There are only two things you can do about such treatment, and one of those (most likely) will make you a criminal as far as the law is concerned. The other, of course, is to do nothing. Good luck with that.
There is no point in placing asinine hope in democratic processes: we have been shown (time and again) that where these exist (!), they will be subverted by those who do not have your best interests at heart.
What do you expect from the WSJ? They're a well known far left radical pacifist publication. It's not like this was in the mainstream media or anything.
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.
I live in Kansas City and I've noticed--in somewhat disbelief--over the last few years, the number of everyday cops rising who wear increasingly comprehensive body armor for regular patrolling and traffic stops. The armor itself almost appears to be intimidating on purpose (it makes them look like bad asses). This is not yet universally the case here, but it gets worse every year. To make the situation even more fun, the more they militarize the bigger assholes they become. Unless they are simply out collecting for their quotas on speeding tickets, they can cause a lot of trouble and their intimidation techniques make me disappointed in my country. I have a story about recently being pulled over for a tail light, that highlights all, but I don't have time to hammer it out here, so just trust me it was bad, but after an hour they finally had to let me go because they didn't have shit on me. Funny part is, after the hour long ordeal of being severely harassed and having certain rights trampled on, they had completely forgotten about the tail light by the time it was all said and done. We really do live in a police state, and I'm not sure if we can do anything about it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Well, as devil's advocate you actually made a pretty good case that there are too many such raids, and that sending SWAT teams in where there is no specific reason to is criminally negligent.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Cops have been breaking down doors, shooting people and abusing their power ever since the dawn of civilization. I think there is something about the Sheriff of Nottingham written about that. "Fritz the Cat" came out in 1972 and cops were called "pigs" then.
Just because your adult life is more recent, or your selective memory prefers to discard negative events (as human memory does), does not mean things have changed much. They did not call it "SWAT" or "raid" then, but they did the same thing.
That's not to say any of that is a "good" thing. But the false nostalgia for the "good old days when a friendly cop stood on the corner smiling to children and waving a friendly nightstick" is just that, and it's dangerous if used as a pretext to "let's go back to those wonderful times". Those times sucked. Move forward, fix things today.
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.
And this is why the "militarization of the police" is a problem. You're not a soldier, this isn't war, and you aren't an occupying force dealing with insurgents. If you think you are, and you treat all non-police as potential threats, you need to turn in your badge and gun and get psychological help.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
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.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
Gun ownership is protected by law. And that is all the more reason that the police should behave in a calm and civil manner; they are creating the problem they fear by behaving like violent criminals themselves. "I have to to home at night" will never be an excuse for breaking into someone else's home and creating situations where people get murdered (and the murderers get off being put behind a desk, rather than behind bars).
If they get a warrant describing the specific place or persons to be searched, knock, and calmly identify themselves and their purpose before drawing arms (as they are expected to), they have nothing to fear from normal citizens.
As to the cases where there is genuine risk from armed criminals involved (which remains the case regardless of the legality of arms), well, quite frankly they were aware of that risk when they signed up. If they are not willing exercise more due diligence first or put their lives on the line to protect and serve, then they should find another line of work.
The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.
Sorry, officer, but you're full of shit. 160 police officers died in 2010, a 37% increase from 2009. Ten years earlier 150 died. That's out of 794,300 cops. And remember, those are all deaths including squad car wrecks.
To put that in better prospective, 774 construction workers died in the US in 2010.
Being a cop is a hell of a lot safer than being a construction worker.
Here's a little hint, Officer Moore: you might want to google before making a fool of yourself.
Free Martian Whores!
but Obama's statement is completely new
First, that statement can mean any number of things. If you believe that statement means anything, do you believe "hope and change" means anything? Politician's statements mean little to nothing. Look at what they do, not what they say.
vast databases on American citizens collected ... as a provision of Obamacare
Does that mean that Canada is already a police state? They've had universal health care for decades.
I think that many trends, like the absurd (and often unconstitutional) collection of data on everyone, and the militarization of police forces, are a serious issue. Discussing it the way you do though makes people prone to dismissing you as a right wing conspiracy theorist.
the local swat decided it would be a good idea to use an ambulance to go in and conduct a raid
For which the genius who approved that idea should have been fired without pension, if not summarily executed. Even in a war zone they don't send in soldiers under cover of a red cross.
Funny enough, none of that really applied until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc. Fear of others in society was something that started to be brought forward in the 70s and 80s with hijackings, bombings, and hostages, mostly overseas, but didn't take hold locally until 2001, which could have been prevented IMHO with merely having followed a single piece of advice from the Israelis: secured cockpit doors.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Most SWAT is used at 3am when the suspect ASLEEP.
It's about TERROR and the raid being punishment.
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."
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.
The argument over who's at fault entirely misses the point. With a little planning the officers could have searched the house without mounting a paramilitary style assault with a SWAT team. They could, for example, have entered the man's house while he was at work. That would have been a safe, predictable, and effective way of obtaining the evidence they needed. Instead the police chose a dangerous and unpredictable alternative.
There's no reason to believe the cops didn't announce themselves, but the instant they *do*, the clock is ticking. If the suspect actually *is* armed and hostile every second waiting increases the danger to the officers on the raid. That puts them in an automatic escalation mode. There's no way for officers put in this situation to distinguish between the case where the occupants aren't responding because they'are asleep, as in this case, or because they are preparing to repel the assault with force.
Ultimately the responsibility for the officer's death lies with the commander who ordered an assault because it was his automatic way of dealing with drug searches. A little thought could have reduced the danger to which his officers were exposed, not to mention anyone who happened to be in the house. A SWAT team is a powerful tool, and like any such tool fools can get enamored of the power and use it where a little finesse would be simpler, safer and more effective.
Nobody deserved to die in this situation, but somebody deserved to lose his job.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
they are state backed thugs. a "Warrior" has a code of ethics and honor. these assclowns have no such thing.
That animation is from Bowling for Columbine, not South Park.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
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.
Yep. If somebody breaks down your door and shines a light into your eyes so you can't see them properly then it is your damn right to shoot the bastard. At that point it propably is even your duty if you've got a wife and kids cowering in the room behind you. This kind of police action is ok when they are intervening to interrupt an ongoing physical assault on somebody. It's propably even a bad idea even then. It is a damn bad idea if they want to pick up any amount of dope, kiddie porn or whatever. They also seem to be damn sloppy in their procedures. There are far too many instances where they did so little recon that they even get the wrong house.
Now I am sorry, any tactical computer game requires more preparation than that. If you did that in X-COM then you would have a lot of dead people at your hand and you will get shut down.
Damn overreacting unprepared idiots. Their uniform is nothing more than gang colors. Yet if they get killed by a frightened family father THEY get the full honors burial complete with flag and trumpets the widow will get sued for damages by the cop's family.
20 minutes into the future
"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
The response of increasing arms is not proportional to FACTS. While small areas of big cities are worse, he rest if the country is more peaceful.. And THAT is where SWAT is rolling out, where it was never nerves before.
As for "I don't do anything bad" all it takes is somebody on yhe internet getting your address and calling up the cops at 3am that you have a gun to your wife's head... SWAT will be there in 20 minutes to blow you away. The whole point of the article is that half the people didn't do wrong or didn't do wrong past expectation of a speeding ticket.
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.
Funny enough, none of that really applied until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business
Incorrect. The US had plenty of involvement in World War 1.
The US involvement in World War 2 started by supplying the allied nations with weapons and money.
Pearl Harbor happened after the US, in coordination Britain and Netherlands, cut off Japans oil supply. Japan needed the oil for their war effort in China and decided to strike against Pearl Harbor after that.
Before World War 1 there was the Spanish-American war that was started on very flimsy grounds.
There's nothing like ringing the doorbell and suddenly all the lights go off. OTOH, I got some really good tips by being polite and minding my own business.
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
If you setup a puppet state then yes.
Besides the US has invaded plenty of countries.
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.
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.
The Barbary Wars were not imperialistic.
"The First Barbary War (1801–1805) ... Barbary corsairs led attacks upon American merchant shipping in an attempt to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute from the United States to avoid further attacks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
"The Second Barbary War (1815) ... brought an end to the American practice of paying tribute to the pirate states and helped mark the beginning of the end of piracy in that region" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Barbary_War
In ten years will we be asking, "Why do SWAT teams wear skulls on their caps?" (Citation: "Are We The Baddies?" by That Mitchell and Webb Look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU)
This statement is so ignorant of American history that I have to start from its beginning.
First of all, the United States is a land of conquered nations and foreign intervention. There were only 13 states in the beginning. We committed genocide to conquer the midwest and the west, invaded Mexico and took their land (where do you think the name for New Mexico came from?) and we have been invading neighbors consistently and for the sole purpose of directing their internal affairs since the 1820s. The only thing that stopped our numerous invasions of foreign lands was the Civil War.
Here is a list:
1915 invasion of Haiti by the United States
1900 invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance (including the United States)
1898 invasion of the Philippines by the United States
1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States
1898 invasion of Spanish Cuba by the United States
1893 invasion of Hawaii by the United States
1846 invasion of Mexico by United States
1813 invasion of Canada by United States
1812 invasions of Canada by United States
1805 invasion of Tripoli by United States and mercenaries
Those are just the "official" wars. There is much more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
Please read just a bit on the topic before you make misleading comments like this. America learned everything from it's ancestor, Great Britain. We've been invading, conquering, taking, and killing since our inception. This whole ridiculous and infantile notion of America's Exceptionalism, even in our imagined good old days, is pure bullshit. The real difference back in those days was whether the United States should stop at our "natural" borders, which included all of North America, the Caribbean (including Cuba), and Hawaii, or if our "manifest destiny" was to continue marching west until we conquered the entire world.
I know it's difficult to see from inside of the news you're exposed to, but the truth remains: we are the empire.
For the past 12 months I have had the great honor to lead over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian employees along with all of their families. Our area of responsibility is diverse and complex. Stretching from California to India, the Indo-Asia-Pacific encompasses over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population.
This region is culturally, socially, economically, and geo-politically diverse. The nations of the Indo-Asia-Pacific include: five of our nation's seven treaty allies; three of the largest and seven of the ten smallest economies; the most populous nations in the world, including the largest Muslim-majority nation; the largest democracy; and the world's smallest republic.
The Indo-Asia-Pacific is the engine that drives the global economy. The "open and accessible" sea lanes throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific annually enjoy over 8 trillion dollars in bilateral trade with one-third of the world's bulk cargo and two-thirds of its oil shipments sailing to or from nine of the world's ten largest economic ports.
By any meaningful measure, the Indo-Asia-Pacific is also the world's most militarized region with seven of the ten largest standing militaries, the world's largest and most sophisticated navies, and five of the world's declared nuclear armed nations.
When taken together all of these aspects represent a region with a unique strategic complexity and a wide, diverse group of challenges that can significantly stress the security environment.
Effectively engaging in the Indo-Asia-Pacific requires a committed and sustained effort, and USPACOM, as the military component of this commitment, is clearly focused in our efforts to deter aggression, assure our allies and partners, and to prevent should our national interests be threatened.
Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III
Commander
U.S. Pacific Command
House Armed Services Committee, 05 March 2013
I don't think it's fair to say that he used deadly force to protect his pot plants. He used deadly force to protect himself.
Google something yourself why don't you?
160 cops died, out of 800,000 or so in 2010? Death rate of 1 in 5000
774 construction workers died in 2010, out of a workforce of over 11 million. Death rate of 1 in 14000. Being a cop is hardly safer than being a construction worker. In fact you're about 3x more likely to die on the job.
Your biased claim is no better than GPs. Worse, actually, since you declared him full of shit and berated him for not using google.
The three round burst limit has two reasons - the one you mention, and the other is that even as a "pop gun" it's very hard to stay on target full auto with a light M4-class .223. No point shooting at the sky, for anyone. I know, I'm a gunsmith, I have a few really nice toys and have used them on ranges. Even great single shot "rapid fire competition" guys can't handle a full auto for crap. Which is also another reason they stopped the '14 from being full auto - too many bullets went "no where useful" - those things really do have a kick.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
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.
There is high gun ownership in other parts of the world; however, in this country you have a situation where police bring violence to non-violent situations. That can spiral out of control, of course, so now the police bring overwhelming force type violence, so that nobody gets hurt, except the other guys.
There is also the US attitude towards guns. In Switzerland, every young man (about 20 years) is required to keep a military assault rifle in their house -- part of being in the army. The swiss don't have the same attitude towards guns. They aren't for self-protection of no (generally) for fun. They are tools for doing their job in the army.
Many states in the USA have "stand your ground" laws which are a recipe for disaster. Shoot someone and then just claim you were afraid, or defending yourself. Gang thugs in Chicago have successfully used these laws to get out of jail time for murdering other gang members. (Yes, your honor, I was terrified, and *had* to defend myself with lethal force. Otherwise I'd be going to jail!)
Politics in the USA is broke, and gun politics is part of the problems. Militarized SWAT teams is just a symptom of paranoid authoritarianism. It will never be fixed while the media just acts as cheerleaders for special interests. (In this case, defense contractors and gun manufacturers.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Actually, what happens when the subjects are known to be armed is quite the opposite. Overwhelming force may be lined up outside if the encounter turns violent, but the violent no-knock raid is generally not used against an armed household.
as far as excessive military, foreign intervention
That just simply isn't true. From the very beginnings of the USA, the hawks had their eyes on other people's territory.
Before the turn of the 20th century, the USA founded and supported Liberia (!) in Africa. The USA was also involved in China (along with France, Britain and Russia), pushing unfair trade treaties on a very weak emperor. And then there was also the occupation several islands in the pacific, including a war with the Philippines, and subsequent occupation. And of course the Spanish-American War, where the USA said to Mexico: "all your base are belong to us."
In the early 20th century (before WWII), the USA extensively interfered with Central and South America: in Panama (political buy off), the Dominican Republic (invasion), Cuba (occupied as part of a treaty to the Spanish-America war), Nicaragua (backed coup, and then later an invasion), Mexico (invasion), Haiti (invasion) and Chili (political/military influence in civil war.)
Outside the Americas, the USA got involved in WW1 (of course), and also the Russian Civil War (1917-1922).
The USA has always being going to war for sh*ts and giggles.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
War on drugs. Thanks Nixon! Thanks Reagan!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
To preface this, I live in a fairly affluent area with extremely low crime. My town has no standing police force, just a satellite sheriffs office. Next town over has about the same demographics but has a 300+ member police force. A few years ago they trained a swat team and bought a very expensive 'urban assault vehicle'. I'm not sure for what, there is zero gang related activity, almost no drug stuff aside from the usual medical marijuana, and as far as I know no dangerous criminals have ever been brought in from the community.
Of course, this comes at the expense of things like schools, where we're jamming 30+ kids in a classroom and the teachers can barely do classroom management, let alone actually teach something.
Liberia was a repatriation colony established by former black slaves. Neither the US Government nor the US Military were involved in it, it was an entirely private concern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia
The US was involved in China, yeah, trying to compete with the long standing British stranglehold on China's products. We never had any sort of colonial cities or 99 year leases on Chinese islands (Britain, Portugal, Spain looking at you guys).
I'll even throw you a freebie that it was a military demonstration that opened up trade with Japan for the US, so what?
You fail to mention that the majority of our military use overseas was either because our trade vessels were attacked or we were openly at war with the Europeans who'd long ago colonized those areas.
The US has done some shady things over the course of it's time, but don't act like we're somehow morally bankrupt next to Europe who may be all "Human rights are awesome!" now but have more blood on their hands collectively than the Mongol Hordes. Who were also worse than us, btw. Go back to school and stop taking History courses filtered through Twitter.
So you made up these points of view by older people in the world between your ears. Make sure your geriatric 40+ straw men get plenty of straw fiber. Meanwhile, in the real world, those of us over 40 are very concerned about our decline into a fascist police state.
Anybody over forty right now could care less about what the police are doing.
Careful with the broad brush there, kid. I'm over forty, and so are a lot of my Libertarian friends who have been warning people about this shit for decades.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Indeed. In fact, one might say it has been the norm throughout recorded times. No matter what civilization you're talking about.
From a country that regularly kills it's school pupils in production-line numbers ... that would be hilarious if it didn't have an element of tragedy about it.
Admit it, Americans, you like having lots of blood and gore on your streets.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
From the mouths of Anonymous Cowards...
Halfway through the thread and finally, somebody gets it right. So sad my mod points expired.