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

#161

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

iambateman wrote: post #123

Caveat: I don't support frequent use of no-knock warrants. That said, this is another article on the story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stu... According to CNN, the offender had sold meth to an informant "a few hours earlier" at the house and had a previous felony weapons charge. Their target is a meth dealer who brings a gun to the table. Given that information, it seems less crazy to th…

No, but I wouldn't raid a house either. I'm no police tactician, but it can't possibly be true that raiding a house is less dangerous than waiting for the suspect to leave his house and arresting him then. For anyone, including the cops. SWAT teams raiding homes should be reserved for active dangers, like hostage situations or shootouts. There's no need for this sort of urgency for apprehending a drug dealer especially given the collateral damage it's so likely to cause.

Edit: wording

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

#162

Post by freehunter » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

tinkerrr wrote: post #35

silverbax88 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds crazy to Americans, too. This isn't happening everywhere and the only accounts are those like this online.

No, this is happening in most parts of the country. See http://www.cato.org/raidmap (more "neutral" source welcome, if someone has another information source/raw data link).

In 2014 there have been two. In 2012, none. 2013 isn't even listed as an option. Deaths from cars hitting wildlife happens all around the country but I wouldn't say that's representative of the state of the country, nor do most of the citizens live in fear of this happening.

These raids are a problem, yes, but in a thread with a European commenting that they think this represents America, your link doesn't really support the argument that this is true.

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

#163

Post by jnbiche » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #85

peterkelly wrote: post #20

I'm struggling to understand how any of the officers on the SWAT team - or, for that matter, those who formulated the policies to use tools like M-16s and flash grenades in drug raids - could possibly consider their actions to be less serious than someone taking or dealing in drugs.

You're missing the social context here. First, this is never about using it's about dealing. Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking. Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes. Drugs are a proxy in a war betwee…

>Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.

This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:

http://pokerati.com/2010/11/poker-raid-in-south-carolina-1-p...

None of these poker game players were "guys with long raps sheets". In fact, most of them had no prior criminal record.

I know of numerous other SWAT raids for other white collar crimes like campaign finance violations but I don't have time to dig them all up now.

Finally, SWAT raids are routinely carried out on "suburban pot dealers". Here's one from a few months ago:

http://marlborough.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/swat-t...

Just Google "pot dealer" and SWAT and you'll find tons of other examples.

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

#164

Post by scarmig » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

iambateman wrote: post #123

Caveat: I don't support frequent use of no-knock warrants. That said, this is another article on the story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stu... According to CNN, the offender had sold meth to an informant "a few hours earlier" at the house and had a previous felony weapons charge. Their target is a meth dealer who brings a gun to the table. Given that information, it seems less crazy to th…

Let's burn the village down to save it.

Their job is fundamentally to protect and serve the public. If they and, more appropriately, the organizations they are a part of myopically equate that to preventing meth dealing while avoiding even the slightest chance of police harm, even at the cost of innocent lives, that's a problem and can and should be held against them.

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

#165

Post by thathonkey » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

agwa wrote: post #58

thathonkey wrote: post #16

This is a side-effect of police militarization that doesn't get much attention from its critics: using advanced military equipment should also require advanced military training. Local police agencies that receive all this new military-spec equipment don't always get (or more likely, never get) the funding for necessary training on how to use it. Much less does such training really exist since this stuff was all desi…

Lack of proper military training is not the problem here. The problem is the militarization in the first place. In war, collateral damage is considered unavoidable and ultimately acceptable in pursuit of victory, which is why drug warriors accept that the occasional baby will be maimed by a flashbang. That sort of approach is unacceptable for domestic law-enforcement. The solution is to roll back the militarization,…

Hence why I said the lack of training is a side-effect of militarization. In other words, yes, militarization of police is the main problem here. I agree with you; I was just pointing out yet-another-reason why it is even worse in practice than in theory.

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

#166

Post by chillingeffect » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #120

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.

This swat team just committed a violent crime. If you're looking for a small amount of drugs on a person who you aren't even sure is present in a single room with a whole pile of occupants including children and you start throwing flashbang grenades then you should be 100% culpable. Stuff like that has no application in regular policing, definitely not in raids to arrest people on suspicion of some small time crime.…

I just watched a brief youtube video on flashbang grenade training [0]. Apparently, the grenades aren't even supposed to be thrown into the room, they're only supposed to be thrown into the doorway. And that's in a military context, not even a police context.

So it's bad enough they're using military hardware, but then they're not even using it according to proper training.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGhfyQXZOwg

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

#167

Post by glogla » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #81

wdewind wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I was about to type a kind of snarky reply along the lines of "Ukraine is still in Europe, no?" and then I realized I had to pick the country in Europe that is literally in the midst of a civil war to get to a comparable situation. Sigh.

Indeed, I was also contemplating some kind of dismissive reply then I remembered I am reading an excellent book about the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday (which I am old enough to just remember happening) and decided not to make that kind of comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_%281972%29 [Yes, it was a long time ago, but I don't think anything about our society here in the UK has changed to such an…

Yes, it doesn't seem that much has changed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menez...

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

#168

Post by 300bps » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

Crito wrote: post #150

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…

> "making it possible for the victims' families to sue them for every penny they have. Yes, leaving them and their families living under a bridge if necessary." General question: could the spouse of somebody being sued for every penny they have insulate their risk by divorcing the person being sued and winning some of their assets before the lawsuit was complete? I'm thinking that if I was being sued, was almost cert…

It is complicated and state specific. In my state it would not be necessary to divorce to protect your largest asset - your house. Any house owned by a husband and wife that is titled as Joint Tenants of the Entirety (default) is protected from creditors of the husband OR wife (but not AND).

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

#169

Post by freehunter » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #160

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) R…

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

Bullshit. The police can throw me in jail before a trial, preventing me from going to work. How's that not a violation of due process?

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

True. You could sue them for enough that they could no longer make the payments on their house, though.

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

#170

Post by true_religion » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #160

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) R…

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

The government isn't actually required to provide 'due processes' unless someone is being deprived of their life or livlihood.

That is to say, I don't believe employees of any stripe (government included) need to go through criminal processing before being suspended or fired.

More so, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure what the specifics of 'due process' are. Simply, any non-arbitrary written policy can be considered a due processes. Its' how boarder guards can get away with harassing people when they step out of line at the TSA.