A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son • Hacker News Board

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#151

Post by scarmig » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

silverbax88 wrote: post #97

frandroid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug war is a race war. It has little to do with drugs. They're not going after white coke/pot users/dealers very much, are they?

Race has nothing to do with it. Lots of meth labs getting busted in rural America are run by white dealers.

Race isn't everything, but it's ridiculous to pretend that race hasn't substantially influenced the drug war. Even aside from the highly unbalanced prosecution and conviction of drug offenders depending on race, race colors everything in the drug war: look at the history of marijuana [0], for instance, or crack cocaine sentencing practices.

[0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the...

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#152

Post by opendais » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #121

opendais wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.

I don't think "nonviolent" is a good description of a lot of hard drug rings. They aren't being violent right at the moment, but if they see a cop standing outside the door, they very well might just shoot him. No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.

1) And how does raiding their place when they aren't there for evidence somehow result in this violence you speak of?

2) You think the people in this article were "hard drug ring members"?

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/lawsuit-clayton-swat-grenade-ba...

You mean like this guy with "an ounce or less of marijuana"?

I think you have no idea what you are talking about. They aren't being used for "hard drugs" they are being used for "any situation where we might be able to link to someone who uses drugs".

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#153

Post by conductr » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

Sue. It's the only way they will learn. Also, release some pictures of the boys injuries to the media. This topic needs some major attention and I don't think ever will get it without a large number of citizens being enraged.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#154

Post by jdcarter » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

chillingeffect wrote: post #106

anigbrowl wrote: post #22

Good grief. SWAT teams in the US are utterly out of control. It's one thing to have resources for the relatively rare armed robbery/hostage/mass shooter situation, to respond to an outbreak of violence; it's quite another to be using them for drug raids and other contexts where they initiate or are the sole cause of violence. This goes hand in hand with the confrontation-obsessed gun culture we have, in which a subse…

That's a fascinating map. One of the interesting things it shows is that the density of botched raids is not correlated to population density. What that suggests is that the raids are the results of authories in some areas not knowing what they're doing while authorities in other areas do.

Also note how many raids are the result of a single informant. I was browsing raids in my area and most of them were from a single informant; in one case even an informant who had a known antagonistic relationship with the subject of the raid.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#155

Post by ganeumann » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

opendais wrote: post #88

dublinben wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-violent crimes turn into violent standoffs when the police routinely respond to them with aggressive raids. This is completely a product of escalation between the illegal gangs and the 'legal' gang.

Yes. A non-swat approach is pretty simple: Observe the location in an unmarked police car and wait for the suspect to leave, then enter to acquire the evidence. No confrontation required. There is no real urgency that justifies a raid when no one is in any danger of violent harm.

Even easier: wait for the suspect to leave the house, arrest him, then go do a leisurely search without having to worry about the suspect being violent.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#156

Post by moggflunkies » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #61

opendais wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.

Non-violent crimes turn into violent standoffs when the police routinely respond to them with aggressive raids. This is completely a product of escalation between the illegal gangs and the 'legal' gang.

ITT: people who have never been in law enforcement or military service.

>drug offenders are perfectly well adjusted people, just politely knock they will let you in every time. >drug dealers don't flee the state/country when they suspect being watched/followed/pending arrest >I wonder why it's called a "trap house"

I hope that you live in an upper middle class community in California to justify the logic behind your post.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#157

Post by grecy » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #57

DrJones1098 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you being serious? In Mexico the narco terrorists pulled innocent people off of a bus and made them pit fight to the death for their amusement. http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-crook... In the middle ages they would impale you on a spike so that you died slowly over days. In Rwanda one tribe butchered 5 million people of another tribe with machetes. An that's just examples I can think of off…

You do realize you're comparing the present day United States law enforcement with Rwandean tribes, Mexican narco-terrorists and the middle ages?

It's become very popular to compare the United States to undeveloped countries and countries in civil war, then declare everything is fine because, comparatively, it looks OK.

It's a very, very sad state of affairs when you have to compare a developed country to undeveloped ones.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#158

Post by lotsofmangos » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

silverbax88 wrote: post #97

frandroid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug war is a race war. It has little to do with drugs. They're not going after white coke/pot users/dealers very much, are they?

Race has nothing to do with it. Lots of meth labs getting busted in rural America are run by white dealers.

Just because some meth labs run by white guys get busted, doesn't mean that there isn't a racial element to the drug war. One does not follow from the other. Convictions for possession, for instance, are massively biased compared to the usage by group.

Why the 88, by the way? I hope it isn't to do with that angry Chaplin lookalike. Is just when combined with silver and a comment saying that race has nothing to do with the drug war in the US, I can't help but get suspicious. Apologies for the godwinning if it is just the year you were born, or something.

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#159

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:16 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #125

jcizzle wrote: post #90

1. This happened in rural Georgia, far away from Atlanta. 2. The suspect was later arrested for dealing meth. This isn't a little dime bag situation as the clearly biased writer would have you believe. 3. This isn't the suspect's first arrest, he was arrested before for distribution. Police found an AK-47 in his house. Here are things that could have been done to prevent this situation. 1. The homeowner could have no…

Did you read the article? 1. The suspect is the nephew. 2. The nephew is not the home owner. 3. The home owner wasn't the one dealing meth. 4. The nephew/suspect wasn't present at the home at the time.

[deleted]

Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son

#160

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:16 PM UTC

erbo wrote: post #129

This should outrage any thinking citizen. We need a new policy for instances of excessive use of force by police: if any such is suspected, all officers involved must be immediately suspended, without pay, while an impartial judge, not a police "Internal Affairs Division" (since police officers too often try to "protect their own"), investigates to see whether the claim is justified. If it's not, the officer(s) can b…

This is just senseless ranting.

1) It's unconstitutional, as a violation of due process, to suspend officers without pay, before they have been adjudicated as having done something wrong.

2) It's probably unconstitutional to impose forfeiture of vested interests as punishment for a crime.

3) Premediated murder requires specific intent to kill. Even if the kid had died, it would most likely be negligent homicide.

4) Removing legal protections for police sounds lovely when you only consider situations like this one, but you forget that for every one instance of something like this, there are dozens of instances of actual bad guys filing meritless lawsuits.