Rise of the Warrior Cop

[Pete]

Originally Posted by TacOfficer

... if you call the police to respond to your home for a burglary or home invasion etc. I hope the officer waits for a search warrant while the occupants within fend for themselves. ....

Timing is everything - if I call about a burglary or home invasion and the cops show up in a few minutes I've got no complaints.

But if I call, then have to resolve the situation myself, sit back and start watching TV and a couple of hours later I get a SWAT Raid - yeah, I'll be complaining.

Right now the local PD is 0 - 1 to me. Seeing how they responded to a theft call I was not impressed.

[JM1347]

I just finished reading " A Government of Wolves" The Emerging American Police State, written by John W Whitehead. It was very eye opening on how a lot of this overuse of SWAT teams has been accepted as standard procedure. It also delves into how law enforcement agencies have circumvented the Bill of Rights. I would recommend everyone add it to their reading list

[Streck-Fu]

When overzealous policing hits the pocketbook....of course, it hits the taxpayers more than the department...LINK....no comment on them being shot 'more than a dozen times' and still surviving....

A Lancaster couple has been awarded over $4 million nearly three years after deputies invaded their home and opened fire.

Sheriff’s Deputies Christopher Conley and Jennifer Pederson were searching for a parolee-at-large in October 2010 when they raided the makeshift residence of Angel Mendez and his wife, Jennifer, without a warrant, court records show.

The couple was shot more than a dozen times.

The male victim was forced to have his leg amputated as a result of his injuries. He was holding a rifle-style BB gun at the time of the raid.

His wife, who was pregnant at the time, suffered a shattered collar bone.

The couple filed suit in 2011, alleging excessive force and federal civil rights violations, City News Service reports.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald sided with the Mendezes following a four-day bench trial earlier this year.

Fitgerald concluded the deputies “violated Mr. and Mrs. Mendez’s constitutional right to be free from an unreasonable search based on the manner of entry”, according to CNS.

Angel and Jennifer Mendez were awarded a respective $3.8 million and $222,000, their attorney said.

[Paslode]

This doesn't quite qualify as SWAT team but it is an example of how some local police officers exceed their power.....

My wife left the house to drop our son off at school, when she was returned she was mad as hell and a bit perplexed.

What happened was she pulled into and parked the circle drive so she could drop off a script with the school nurse. Apparently she entered the area about 4 minutes earlier than she was supposed to. And while in the nurses office, Patrolman Barney Fife comes in and notifies my wife that she entered the circle drive earlier than the times posted and that he will arrest her if she does it again.

What she could warrant a ticket or fine, but it is not something one would expect to be arrested unless it was deemed you were resisting arrest......but then again the Local PD has been known to turn a Welfare Check into trip to the morgue.

[Streck-Fu]

back on the SWAT wagon....LINK

SOUTH COUNTY, MO (KTVI)– Residents were alarmed after a SWAT team lined a South County neighborhood Tuesday night.

The quiet South County street was crawling with SWAT officers, an unnerving situation which turns out to have been the relatively routing service of a warrant.

An unidentified man pulled up around 8:15 p.m. was frisked by police and then detained for questioning, but what got neighbors here very upset happened a few minutes earlier. It was the presence of a SWAT team, complete with officers wearing armor and carrying assault rifles surrounding the man’s home as police went to the door. One woman frantically told her husband, the army’s here.

As it turns out, St. Louis County police say the use of the SWAT team is standard procedure in serving a felony warrant, no matter what it’s for. In this case officers say it was an administrative warrant, though they wouldn’t elaborate. For people on Autumn Drive, it was all a little unsettling.

Police say that it was the service of an administrative warrant by their special investigations unit. Officers will not go into any greater detail, though SWAT team members were downplaying it again saying that their presence on any felony warrant search is standard practice.

[Streck-Fu]

And SWAT for code enforcement? LINK

A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers," after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.

Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including "grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises," Smith's statement said. She said the police didn't produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn't be identified. According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested -- for outstanding traffic violations.

[The_Mentalist]

I DL'd the sample of this book and checked it out. Seems really good. Since I just finished Chris Kyles "American Gun" I can DL this complete book and read it next. Looks like a lot of great information.

[SF18C]

Now they are practicing on school kids on a bus!

http://www.policestateusa.com/archives/208

SWAT team performs realistic hijacking drill on school bus filled with children

“I didn’t know what was going on, because at the start he was just a normal person and then he pulled out a gun and a mask, and put it all on,” said teen Justin Klocko to ABC 13 News. “Then he started tying everybody down and it just got really scary.”

When is this kind of shit going to be looked at as too much????

[Storm]

I tend to agree that it's a question of leadership, and training. I think a huge part of this equation is the vastly differing training levels of not just SWAT, but police officers in general.

For example, my brother is a former 11B, that consequently worked alongside SF in Iraq. He just graduated from the police academy about two months ago. In his class were two former Rangers, along with a total of about fifteen military veterans.

According to him, the class ran from some absolutely fantastic potential officers and leaders, all the way down to a few guys/gals who would literally squeal every time they had to fire their gun during training. One particular individual managed to lodge cones from the driving course in the wheel well of their vehicle on multiple occasions. Some couldn't even finish their runs/jogs/minimal physical standards. It didn't matter, they all graduated.

Why are the standards there if they aren't upheld? Just another form of participation medal at the public's expense? Basically if you don't quit, you get a badge, if in fact, you make it to the police training academy? By his account, his class had mostly quality candidates, so why allow the candidates who can't meet the standard through?

Which leads me to another point. I'm not sure about how it is in other parts of the U.S., but around here, military veterans are on a distinct and separate list from their civilian counterparts. Other places get points added to their overall scores for selection for past service. Overall, I think this is a noble idea, and a practical one. I, for one, would much rather have my brother trying to save my butt in one of these situations, instead of somebody who had never fired their weapon in a situation of any "live" scenario. By the same token, I have a friend who is a police officer who has told me he'd much rather me fire his gun should the need arise. After seeing him in action, I think that would be best for all parties involved as well(and I am certainly nobody of distinction when it comes to firing a gun). That being said, in other aspects, he's an absolutely fantastic officer.

As noted, there is a fine line being drawn here.

How do other LEO's and QP's feel about that preference?

Is this treatment contributing to the "rise of the warrior cop" ? Or is it just simply better to have veterans trained in the combat arms branch specifically on the force due to their training?

Are having more veterans on these police forces and SWAT teams creating a greater culture of "warrior-cop" preference through their shared experiences and training? Or is the "warrior-cop" theme leading departments to lean towards selecting these veterans for officers/SWAT teams due to their credentials(for obvious reasons)? Could all this fit in neatly with our current seeming obsession with "direct action" missions that have been discussed here previously?

[Team Sergeant]

We're not against SWAT teams, we're raising concern with the "misuse" and "over use" of the LEO SWAT teams.

And that "is" a leadership problem.

[GratefulCitizen]

Tax it.

A state legislature could pass a law defining what constitutes "use" of a SWAT team (even if it's non-SWAT using certain tactics).
Appropriate taxes could be assessed on departments (local or federal) for each "use" and paid to the state treasury.

This would solve the problem of overuse to justify budget (and rein in over zealous Department of Education actions...).
If a SWAT team were truly needed for an incident, a department wouldn't even consider the expense when making that decision.

State-level law enforcement wouldn't be much affected.
Governors have the power to call out the NG, so exercising lower levels of police power seems to be appropriate to state-level government.

[The_Mentalist]

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/p...-heart-attack/

Here is another for you. A 0500 raid to look for a cell phone....

On Thursday, August 15, 2013, police responded to a report of a 21-year-old woman who had her cell phone stolen. A witness told police he observed someone with red pants run into 379 Rockaway Parkway. Officers arrived at the address, and claimed they knocked politely on door, asking for residents’ cooperation in allowing them to search. The family who occupies the basement apartment, as well as the residents of the first floor, offer a different version of events. The Alcis family showed NY Daily News their door, which was splintered near the lock from where police pried it open.

The Alcis family says they were asleep when officers burst inside their basement apartment. 43-year-old Carlos Alcis, a father of eight, collapsed when he encountered the officers inside the apartment. He was left unattended while the police went after his 15-year-old son, Emmanuel, who made the unfortunate choice of wearing red shorts to bed. Emmanuel was awoken with a flashlight in his face and brought to the victim in his backyard. The woman with the missing cell phone negatively identified him as being the perpetrator. “Its not him,” she said.

Read more. The father died on the floor while police ransacked the home.

[Streck-Fu]

Do you like to garden? Maybe you live in the areas where you can benefit from early spring starts inside your basement. Maybe buying garden supplies will get your house raided and you get to study your hardwood floors with a gun to the back of your head.....LINK

LEAWOOD, Kan. (AP) — Two former CIA employees whose Kansas home was fruitlessly searched for marijuana during a two-state drug sweep claim they were illegally targeted, possibly because they had bought indoor growing supplies to raise vegetables.

Adlynn and Robert Harte sued this week to get more information about why sheriff's deputies searched their home in the upscale Kansas City suburb of Leawood last April 20 as part of Operation Constant Gardener — a sweep conducted by agencies in Kansas and Missouri that netted marijuana plants, processed marijuana, guns, growing paraphernalia and cash from several other locations.

April 20 long has been used by marijuana enthusiasts to celebrate the illegal drug and more recently by law enforcement for raids and crackdowns. But the Hartes' attorney, Cheryl Pilate, said she suspects the couple's 1,825-square-foot split level was targeted because they had bought hydroponic equipment to grow a small number of tomatoes and squash plants in their basement.

"With little or no other evidence of any illegal activity, law enforcement officers make the assumption that shoppers at the store are potential marijuana growers, even though the stores are most commonly frequented by backyard gardeners who grow organically or start seedlings indoors," the couple's lawsuit says.

The couple filed the suit this week under the Kansas Open Records Act after Johnson County and Leawood denied their initial records requests, with Leawood saying it had no relevant records. The Hartes say the public has an interest in knowing whether the sheriff's department's participation in the raids was "based on a well-founded belief of marijuana use and cultivation at the targeted addresses, or whether the raids primarily served a publicity purpose."

"If this can happen to us and we are educated and have reasonable resources, how does somebody who maybe hasn't led a perfect life supposed to be free in this country?" Adlynn Harte said in an interview Friday.

The suit filed in Johnson County District Court said the couple and their two children — a 7-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son — were "shocked and frightened" when deputies armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests pounded on the door of their home around 7:30 a.m. last April 20.

"It was just like on the cops TV shows," Robert Harte told The Associated Press. "It was like 'Zero Dark Thirty' ready to storm the compound."

During the sweep, the court filing said, the Hartes were told they had been under surveillance for months, but the couple "know of no basis for conducting such surveillance nor do they believe such surveillance would have produced any facts supporting the issuance of a search warrant."

Harte said he built the hydroponic garden with his son a couple of years ago. He said they didn't use the powerful light bulbs that are sometimes used to grow marijuana and that the family's electricity usage didn't change dramatically. Changes in utility usage can sometimes lead authorities to such operations.

When law enforcement arrived, the family had just six plants — three tomato plants, one melon plant and two butternut squash plants — growing in the basement, Harte said.

The suit also said deputies "made rude comments" and implied their son was using marijuana. A drug-sniffing dog was brought in to help, but deputies ultimately left after providing a receipt stating, "No items taken."

Pilate said no one in the Harte family uses illegal drugs and no charges were filed. The lawsuit noted Adlynn Harte, who works for a financial planning firm, and Robert Harte, who cares for the couple's children, each were required to pass rigorous background checks for their previous jobs working for the CIA in Washington, D.C. Pilate said she couldn't provide any other details about their CIA employment.

Pilate said any details gleaned from the open records suit could be used in a future federal civil rights lawsuit.

"You can't go into people's homes and conduct searches without probable cause," Pilate said.

Leawood City Administrator Scott Lambers said Friday that he couldn't comment on pending litigation. The sheriff's office also had no comment.

"Obviously with an ongoing lawsuit we are not able to talk about any details of it until it's been played out in court," said Johnson County Deputy Tom Erickson.

[Remington Raidr]

from the demon weed it is totally worth it. Rock on, deputy Fife.

[kgoerz]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

You are correct, but it doesn't matter to me what it's makeup, it was 12 heavily armed LEO's making entry into a home that, IMO, was not justified given the circumstances.

I've discussed the militarization of American Law Enforcement before and it needs to end. MRAPS, Drones, machineguns, it needs to end.

The use of SWAT. It's one of the most blatant missuses of power by law enforcement. Have to justify that budget for all those cool toys. Have to kick that door down because the guy has a weed plant in his back yard.

If they’re not extorting money out of working Tax Payers with parking and speeding tickets, they are kicking down doors in the middle of the night.
Having been an Agent for a couple of years. Cops spend more time figuring out how to do less work then the actual work they should be doing.