My question is-
why does it take a botched raid on a mayors house before anyone takes any notice of the misuse of SWAT nationwide?
I'm sorry the mayor lost his dogs-
But people have lost their lives.
I agree that we can't allow criminals like the North Hollywood Shooters to have the upper hand when it comes to weapons and skills in the arena of 'cops vs. robbers'-but I've seen TV shows that depict cops raiding peoples homes over stolen copper electrical wire.....The 'justification' for this was that "any person brazen enough to steal thousands of dollars of live copper wire is a dangerous person".
Really?
Or maybe they're trying to keep a roof over their head-not justifying a crime,but geez.....
anyway,the guy met the SWAT team with a shotgun,luckily,he stood down.The detectives on the case found no evidence to actually arrest the suspect.....so this guy might have been in a shootout over not just copper wire,but over an investigation that ultimately yielded no results.
The problem here is that when you are set upon by a dozen armed individuals,it immediately presents a 'fight or flight' situation,and so instead of a couple of gumshoes showing up with a warrant to search and a few uniformed cops for backup;who then knock on the door and present their warrant in a non-confrontational manner,the SWAT team is an immediate escalation of force.
Nationwide,people have been killed by this kind of innapropriate police activity when the wrong houses get raided,or when a jumpy cop with a hairy trigger finger mistakes an innocent object for a weapon-which would have most likely never happened if the situation wasn't immediately escalated into a conflict by the use of SWAT and their aggressive tactics-which should really be used against felons of the North Hollywood kind,and other serious overt threats of violence.
But instead,SWAT has been increasingly used to serve warrants rather than respond to serious emergencies.
This precedent has resulted in a growing number of botched raids-
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ Its just bad business all the way around-and its sad that it took a mayors involvement on the experiencing end of this nonsense to actually raise real concerns.
