Rise of the Warrior Cop

[Surgicalcric]

Originally Posted by SF18C

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

When a father beats the shit out of a cop.

[Pete]

John Stossel's take on the subject.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/2...-warrior-cops/

"We need police to catch murderers, thieves and con men, and so we give them special power — the power to use force on others. Sadly, today’s police use that power to invade people’s homes over accusations of trivial, nonviolent offenses — and often do it with tanks, battering rams and armor you’d expect on battlefields............"

[Sdiver]

.... and the hits just keep on comin' ....

Why does NASA need a SWAT team? To steal moon dust from retirees!

A recent weapons purchase by NASA piqued the interest of some of my readers, prompting questions such as, “What is NASA doing with assault rifles?” In post 9/11 America, no self-respecting federal agency — from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Education — can exist without its own SWAT team. A strong trend of militarizing law enforcement has been occurring for some time, and if this is a surprise to you, its time to catch up. Yes, even NASA has a SWAT team, and you may be surprised with some of their assignments, which include militarized perimeter security and robbing grandmothers of heirloom decorative paperweights.

<snip>


http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/w...from-retirees/

[Tree Potato]

Originally Posted by Sdiver

.... and the hits just keep on comin' ....

Why does NASA need a SWAT team? Given the high profile, cost, and classified nature of many space launches, suitable protection against things our enemies may attempt is appropriate. Any number of countries would love to take Uncle Sam down a few pegs by causing a catastrophic launch failure. It's a shame Police State USA doesn't recognize that, it diminishes their credibility.

Swiping a paper weight with alleged fleck of moon dust from a little old lady, though, is indeed over the top. Some special weapons and/or tactics may have been needed to steal the rock, but why not just wait for her to leave home, get a search warrant, have a "lock smith" open the door, and take what they wanted? Why all the drama?

Sometimes less is more.

[Streck-Fu]

How about EPA SWAT raids for water testing.....LINK

Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.

Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door -- as they used to do -- and said they wanted to check the water.

The EPA has refused to publicly explain why it used armed officers as part of what it called a “multi-jurisdictional” investigation of possible Clean Water Act violations in the area.

A conference call was held last week to address the investigation. On the line were members of the Alaska Congressional delegation, their staff, state officers, and the EPA. According to one Senate staffer, the federal agency said it decided to send in the task force armed and wearing body armor because of information it received from the Alaska State Troopers about “rampant drug and human trafficking going on in the area.”

The miners contacted by the task force were working in the area of the Fortymile National Wild and Scenic River. The federal designation, made in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, protects 32 miles between Chicken and Eagle, Alaska. It is a remote area, close to the Canadian border and the town of Boundary. The nearest city of any real size is Fairbanks, 140 miles to the northwest. It was unknown to everyone in the area that there is a rampant problem with drug and human traffickers.

This also came as news to the Alaska State Troopers, whom the EPA said supplied the information about drugs and human trafficking, and at least one U.S. senator.

“Their explanation -- that there are concerns within the area of rampant drug trafficking and human trafficking going on -- sounds wholly concocted to me,” said Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“The Alaska State Troopers did not advise the EPA that there was dangerous drug activity. We do not have evidence to suggest that is occurring,” said Trooper spokesperson Megan Peters.

[badshot]

Originally Posted by Tree Potato

why not just wait for her to leave home

Sounds like a safer way for everyone and much cheaper too.

Doesn't sound like much thinking is going on there...

[Streck-Fu]

Monterey County, CA pays $2.6M in wrongful death suit of innocent man killed in house fire caused by SWAT flashbang....LINK

Armed with a search warrant, the sheriff's SWAT team surrounded Serrato's house in a military-style operation Jan. 5, 2011, while looking for suspects in a New Year's shooting that wounded three outside the Mucky Duck bar in downtown Monterey.

It was later determined Serrato, 31, was not involved in the shooting and was unarmed in the house. After hailing him for an hour, the family's attorneys said, deputies broke a front window and tossed in the grenade to flush him out.

The device ignited a sofa and fire quickly spread. Instead of trying to help Serrato, who was emitting "anguished cries" and breaking windows, SWAT team members retreated to the transport vehicle, pointed rifles toward the home and awaited the fire department, the suit said.

[The Reaper]

Should come directly out of the departmental budget.

TR

[Team Sergeant]

Some of the LEO's problems is that they take Close Quarters Training from frauds that have NEVER done it themselves.

And yes there are hundreds of frauds teaching police all over this country. Many inflate their military training to gain contracts from law enforcement.

Maybe the police need to take a hard look at the training they have been receiving and start suing those ""Police/SWAT Training" outfits for putting them and their "victims" in grave danger.

Yeah, hundreds of law enforcement training frauds. Sort of like the martial arts training, 75% are total frauds.

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

Some of the LEO's problems is that they take Close Quarters Training from frauds that have NEVER done it themselves.

And yes there are hundreds of frauds teaching police all over this country. Many inflate their military training to gain contracts from law enforcement.

Maybe the police need to take a hard look at the training they have been receiving and start suing those ""Police/SWAT Training" outfits for putting them and their "victims" in grave danger.

Yeah, hundreds of law enforcement training frauds. Sort of like the martial arts training, 75% are total frauds.

There is a LOT of that bullshit going on unfortunately.

[OperaHotelBlues]

Originally Posted by Richard

An interesting question to ponder in today's world - Is it time to reconsider the militarization of American policing?

Richard

Rise of the Warrior Cop
WSJ, 19 July 2013
Part 1 of 2

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

The country's first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to 80%.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit. None of these federal departments has responded to my requests for information about why they consider such high-powered military-style teams necessary.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs.

The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose during the domestic strife and civil unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had grown frustrated with his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the 1965 Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular to Marine Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers who could respond in a similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.

Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker thought the concept risked a breach in the divide between the military and law enforcement. But with the arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the green light to start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid against a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.

At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was declaring war on drugs. Among the new, tough-minded law-enforcement measures included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a policy that allowed drug cops to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. After fierce debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics agents in 1970.

Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal agents breaking down the doors of private homes (often without a warrant) and terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress repealed the no-knock law in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without congressional authorization).

During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods converged with the drug war. By the end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought together police officers and soldiers for drug interdiction. National Guard helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of marijuana plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National Guard, the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop in to eradicate the plants and capture the people growing them.

Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were acquiring ever bigger weapons and the police needed to stay a step ahead in the arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile incidents in which police were outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread problem. A study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that less than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a military-grade weapon. Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in 2004 came to similar conclusions: The overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed with handguns, and not particularly powerful ones.

The new century brought the war on terror and, with it, new rationales and new resources for militarizing police forces. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high.

The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When the craze for poker kicked into high gear, a number of police departments responded by deploying SWAT teams to raid games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal gambling was suspected. According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations, there have been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Dallas.

(Cont'd)

There was a time when there were Peace Officers in most Law Enforcement departments but now all to often we seem to have arrogant thugs with badges itching for some action at the public's expense!

[MR2]

107-year-old Arkansas man dies in shootout with S.W.A.T.

Somebody better check on Dusty...

All kidding aside, what is an appropriate time to wait someone out? Especially someone who is likely to die of natural causes in the next twenty minutes! I'm sure there are extenuating factors that are unique to every case, but really?

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by MR2

107-year-old Arkansas man dies in shootout with S.W.A.T.

Somebody better check on Dusty...

Not funny, dude.

That was my little brother...

[MR2]

[SF_BHT]

They should have thrown a box of depends with a rope attached down the hall. A 107 yr old could not hold out long....