Stoner4Life
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You and your law-abiding neighbors in Mississippi might be just one street address away from a life-threatening, midnight raid by a local paramilitary police unit.
As these so-called SWAT squads increasingly become America's favored search warrant delivery service, bungled raids - including many to the wrong address - have skyrocketed. In these assaults on private property, scores of innocent citizens, police officers and nonviolent offenders have died.
In a recent CATO Institute report titled "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America," Radley Balko describes how, "Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home."
These raids - as many as 40,000 per year - terrorize nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians who are awakened in the dead of night as teams of heavily armed paramilitary units invade their homes.
In Mississippi earlier this year, reports Balko, acting on a tip from an informant that someone was operating a meth lab, police in Horn Lake launched a raid.
Once the paramilitary unit arrived at the scene, however, they found two houses on the property, not one. They picked one and conducted the raid. They woke up, terrorized and injured a couple in their 80s, leaving the man with bruised ribs and the woman with a dislocated shoulder. Later, they found the meth lab in the other house.
SWAT raids can go tragically wrong.
How did the once-trusted neighborhood cop become a serious threat to life and privacy on the home front? Originally, Los Angeles officials formed the nation's first SWAT units in response to civil riots and hostage taking and bomb-toting radical groups in the 1960s. But by 1995, one study found, 89 percent of the nation's police departments, including 65 percent of smaller towns in the 25,000-50,000 population range, had a paramilitary unit.
SWAT squads found a new lease on life in the emerging tough-on-drugs culture of the 1970s. By 1995, serving search warrants, mostly in no-knock "drug raids," accounted for 75 percent of the actions of the nation's SWAT squads.
These SWAT squads have become more and more of a threat to our civil liberties.
First, they depend on notoriously unreliable informants when picking raid targets.
Second, SWAT teams trained by U.S. Army Ranger and Navy Seal units blur the line between war and law enforcement. Citizens are then treated as if they are, in fact, combatants.
The use of military assault weapons and tactics actually turn otherwise non-violent situations into violent confrontations when startled occupants try to arm and defend themselves.
Finally, many law enforcement agencies receive money from the sale of boats, cars and other assets seized during raids - a practice that serves as a license for SWAT teams for more asset-seizing raids.
To rein in out-of-control SWAT units, Mississippi's state and local governments should limit the use of these squads to their original purposes, end corrupting asset forfeiture policies, and pass laws that safeguard families' rights to the privacy and sanctity of their homes.
NewsHawk: Stoner4Life - 420 Magazine
Source: Clarion-Ledger, The
Pubdate: Mon, 16 Oct 2006
Author: Ronald Fraser, Ph.D.
Copyright: 2006 The Clarion-Ledger
Contact: letters@jackson.gannett.com
Website: clarionledger.com : Mississippi's News Source
As these so-called SWAT squads increasingly become America's favored search warrant delivery service, bungled raids - including many to the wrong address - have skyrocketed. In these assaults on private property, scores of innocent citizens, police officers and nonviolent offenders have died.
In a recent CATO Institute report titled "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America," Radley Balko describes how, "Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home."
These raids - as many as 40,000 per year - terrorize nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians who are awakened in the dead of night as teams of heavily armed paramilitary units invade their homes.
In Mississippi earlier this year, reports Balko, acting on a tip from an informant that someone was operating a meth lab, police in Horn Lake launched a raid.
Once the paramilitary unit arrived at the scene, however, they found two houses on the property, not one. They picked one and conducted the raid. They woke up, terrorized and injured a couple in their 80s, leaving the man with bruised ribs and the woman with a dislocated shoulder. Later, they found the meth lab in the other house.
SWAT raids can go tragically wrong.
How did the once-trusted neighborhood cop become a serious threat to life and privacy on the home front? Originally, Los Angeles officials formed the nation's first SWAT units in response to civil riots and hostage taking and bomb-toting radical groups in the 1960s. But by 1995, one study found, 89 percent of the nation's police departments, including 65 percent of smaller towns in the 25,000-50,000 population range, had a paramilitary unit.
SWAT squads found a new lease on life in the emerging tough-on-drugs culture of the 1970s. By 1995, serving search warrants, mostly in no-knock "drug raids," accounted for 75 percent of the actions of the nation's SWAT squads.
These SWAT squads have become more and more of a threat to our civil liberties.
First, they depend on notoriously unreliable informants when picking raid targets.
Second, SWAT teams trained by U.S. Army Ranger and Navy Seal units blur the line between war and law enforcement. Citizens are then treated as if they are, in fact, combatants.
The use of military assault weapons and tactics actually turn otherwise non-violent situations into violent confrontations when startled occupants try to arm and defend themselves.
Finally, many law enforcement agencies receive money from the sale of boats, cars and other assets seized during raids - a practice that serves as a license for SWAT teams for more asset-seizing raids.
To rein in out-of-control SWAT units, Mississippi's state and local governments should limit the use of these squads to their original purposes, end corrupting asset forfeiture policies, and pass laws that safeguard families' rights to the privacy and sanctity of their homes.
NewsHawk: Stoner4Life - 420 Magazine
Source: Clarion-Ledger, The
Pubdate: Mon, 16 Oct 2006
Author: Ronald Fraser, Ph.D.
Copyright: 2006 The Clarion-Ledger
Contact: letters@jackson.gannett.com
Website: clarionledger.com : Mississippi's News Source
