SWAT teams are out of control in this country. How do we rein them in?

[Flaneur]

The infamous Columbia, Missouri, dog killing video is just the latest in an endless litany of over-the-top SWAT raids, mostly connected with enforcing drug prohibition.

SWAT teams were originally conceived as specialized units for dealing with hostage and other high-risk situations in major cities. But over the years, they have spred to departments large and small across the land and mission creep has resulted in their increasing use. One student of SWAT estimates that SWAT teams are used 40,000 times a year.

This despite the fact that the number of cops killed doing drug raids is miniscule, less than a handful each year in tens of thousands of such raids.

Only one state, Maryland, has done anything to rein them in. It passed a law mandating regular reporting of SWAT activities after a PG County SWAT team raided the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, killed his dogs as they ran away, and brutalized the mayor and his mother-in-law--all over a package of pot that dealers had shipped to his house without his knowledge.

SWAT raid result in the deaths of home owners as well as their dogs, not to mention psychological trauma for innocent parties. They also result in intense hatred for and disgust with police. They're bad for the community and bad for the cops.

How do we rein them in?

[PM Martin]

1. K/R

This has bothered me greatly.

[Warpy]

2. SWAT teams were Nixon's baby

and a great way to get around Posse Comitatus during the antiwar protests: just militarize the local cops. A huge amount of Federal money was made available for their "special weapons and tactics." As someone who survived a police riot during that period when they were trying out their new toys, I can say it's worked remarkably well for the Feds, not so well for we the people.

I'm not sure how we can reverse the process beyond reversing the funding, allowing all those "special weapons" to die of old age.

[PM Martin]

4. Nixon was really a POS.

[jdlh8894]

3. Cut their funding? n/t

[TheKentuckian]

5. Better rein in the cops first but before you can do that you have to

break the pro-police state, more prisons the better, authoritarian mentality of the electorate.

[T Wolf]

6. Electrified doors and land mines. Punji pits and acid balloons. Hell, let's just hire

Macaulay Culkin to organize home security.

[Flaneur]

7. How about some effective oversight?

I think the Maryland law is a step in the right direction.

Or perhaps local civilian police review boards that have some teeth?

And, yes, I'm all for de-funding them, but that's a tough political battle.

Ending the goddamned war on drugs would be a good start, too.

[PM Martin]

8. I understand that the current VP was

one of the hardliners when it comes to being "tough on crime" (during his Senatorial tenure).

[Echo In Light]

9. Attempt to overcome passive indifference, & reveal RW propaganda that promotes police state

... in so many different ways throughout the 'news' and mainstream pop culture i.e. tv, movies

[Newest Reality]

10. Well, it is going to sound

conspiratorial to those who don't watch the trends if you suggest anything because you first have to admit that we are watching the formation of a miltary/police state.

How does one stop Fascism, is really the question to me. Oh no, the F-word again. When the collective will of the people is so malleable and a majority tends to take media agitprop for news and reality while also tolerating the suspicious utilization of "terrorism" as a fear tactic to enact measures that clearly restrict freedom, what is the solution?

You would have to not only pry the reigns of creeping fascism from the hands of those empowered to enact it, you would have also have to have a collective moment of assessment as to why we are allowing this to digress into such a state of affairs. I mean, it is obvious, isn't it? We enable them as they disable us. That's the formula. We have vast numbers and we must be managed and that is a fact, not an opinion.

We will receive as much of that kind of treatment as long as we will tolerate it and allow it to reflect our overall will while we generally stay distracted by a plethora of other issues and are able to ignore the serious ramifications of where this is all leading us.

[Echo In Light]

12. Dem gatekeepers are indeed an unfortunate obstacle

... they take greater issues w/those wary of police state than they do w/the actuality and inherent abuses of the police state

[autorank]

11. Police shoot schizophrenic man at home, alone, in bed

How about this nonsense? They can shoot anyone, anytime with little scrutiny.

This Week in Crime: Fairfax Police Officer Cleared in Shooting of Fox Mill Man
http://www.restonian.org/2010/02/this-week-in-crime-fairfax-police.html
The police officer who shot a mentally ill Fox Mill man in his home on Feb. 5 has been cleared of criminal charges. The man, 25-year-old Ian C. Smith, is expected to recover.

The Fairfax County police officer who shot a mentally ill Herndon area man in his basement on Feb. 5 will not be charged with a crime, the Fairfax prosecutor said Friday.

Tactical officers were trying to take Ian C. Smith, 25, into custody after he had shown the handle of a gun to his mother and sister. Fairfax police said they thought Smith was asleep, but when they went to the basement, he reportedly pointed a gun -- now known to be a plastic BB gun -- at an officer.

The officer heard "click click click," and thought a trigger was being pulled and shot Smith in the chest and the stomach.

Smith's family said Thursday that Smith had regained consciousness this week in the intensive care unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital, but doctors told the family that Smith is not out of mortal danger.

Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said Friday he had reviewed the case and "found no criminal liability on the part of the officer who fired his weapon." The officer's name has not been released. Fairfax police typically do not release the names of officers involved in shootings or other critical events.

Alan E. Smith, Ian Smith's father, said he was not surprised by the ruling. He said he has become increasingly suspicious of the police explanation of how the shooting occurred in the basement, and why the decision was made to enter the basement when his son, who the police knew was paranoid schizophrenic, was the only person in the house. (Indeed!)

"Ian is going to live to tell his side of the story," Alan Smith said. He said his son has undergone eight operations to repair the damage from two .45-caliber slugs, and that doctors have not yet been able to close his chest up.

[MicaelS]

13. Prince George County police seem to have a history of brutality

2 More Officers Suspended In UMd. Attack

Prince George's County police are still under fire for the brutal attack of a University of Maryland student. Before the video of officers beating the college student sparked nationwide outrage, Prince George's County police faced a string of high-profile incidents. They included the taped beating of an unarmed man during a traffic stop which WJZ showed you last year. The man settled with the county last month for more than $125,000.

In 2008, a Prince George's SWAT team raided the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo who did nothing illegal. Police shot and killed his two black labs. Problems in Prince George's County have been so widespread, the Justice Department was called in to monitor police. That oversight only ended a year ago. The county executive prosecuted 11 officers for on-duty misconduct while he was state's attorney.

Mayor Cheye Calvo re-elected

Cheye Calvo, the Berwyn Heights mayor who is suing Prince George's County Sheriff Michael A. Jackson and others over a botched raid in which Calvo's two dogs were killed, easily won reelection Tuesday. Calvo said many voters at the town's polling site talked to him about the July 29, 2008, incident in which SWAT officers from the county Sheriff's Department stormed into his home and fatally shot his family's two pet Labradors.

The SWAT officers raided the Calvo home after county police learned that a box of marijuana was being delivered to Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic. The officers shot the couple's two black Labradors, Payton and Chase, and forced Calvo to kneel on the ground at gunpoint with his hands bound. After an investigation, authorities said neither Calvo nor Tomsic had anything to do with the marijuana.An internal sheriff's investigation found no wrongdoing by the officers. Jackson said last June that the findings were "consistent with what I've said all along: My deputies did their jobs to the fullest extent of their abilities."

Calvo's lawsuit, in Circuit Court, alleges that the officers entered his home without an appropriate warrant, that they shot the dogs without justification, and that the event was part of a "pattern and practice" of brutality by the sheriff's SWAT unit. In an article he wrote for The Washington Post, Calvo said the officers' actions amounted to "business as usual."

[virgogal]

14. Maybe the best solution would be to get rid of all police nationwide and

let us take care of ourselves.

This would eliminate abuse of power by the police.

[pinboy3niner]

15. The first SWAT team was created by Daryl Gates in the LAPD in '68

(wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT)

Gates originally wanted to call it "Special Weapons ATTACK Team," but the then-chief shot that name down. Gates had come up through the ranks, and had served as Captain Commander of the LAPD's Intelligence Division in the mid-60's. That was the unit that spied on the antiwar movement.

[Flaneur]

16. Yeah, thanks, Darryl, for the gift that keeps on giving.

[unpossibles]

17. end the war on drugs.

I'd like to think that we learned our lessons from Prohibition, but we really did not.

Also, private for-profit prisons are a horrible idea and just add to the problems, imo.

[Flaneur]

18. The SWAT outrage thread has almost 300 replies.

This "what are we going to do about it" thread, not so much.

[leftstreet]

19. Which suggests police state propaganda works

...when citizens come to believe nothing can be done about it

[Uncle Joe]

20. End the asinine, dysfunctional, insane, Constitution shredding, familial destructive

"War on Drugs."


It's nothing but a surreptitious class war being waged by the corporate supremacists to demean, diminish and disenfranchise the American People from their government and livelihoods.

Thanks for the thread, Flaneur.

[superduperfarleft]

21. All police forces should have community oversight.

Staffed with people that are not connected to the police force that live in the community which is being policed, and they should have the power to discipline and fire officers, and I'd hope that the city's DA's office would take their recommendations to prosecute seriously.

Remember, they're supposed to work for US, not the other way around.

[PM Martin]

22. kick