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

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

#171

Post by thathonkey »

rayiner wrote: post #27

This was the result of a no-knock warrant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-knock_warrant , which allows police to enter a home without prior warning, on the theory that giving notice will allow people inside to destroy evidence. They are almost uniquely a product of the drug war. One can imagine very few situations outside of drugs were evidence could be so easily destroyed as to justify a no-knock warrant.

Not to mention you'd have to be a pretty low-level drug offender to be able to destroy enough/all of the evidence in the time "not knocking" saves the police.

(ie. You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine and a triple-beam down the average toilet in a matter of minutes)

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

#172

Post by mikeash »

Glyptodon wrote: post #65
rayiner wrote: post #27

This was the result of a no-knock warrant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-knock_warrant , which allows police to enter a home without prior warning, on the theory that giving notice will allow people inside to destroy evidence. They are almost uniquely a product of the drug war. One can imagine very few situations outside of drugs were evidence could be so easily destroyed as to justify a no-knock warrant.

It's a really stupid theory. Destroying evidence is just another charge to throw on and doesn't really suggest any risk of violence. Though sure, if they flush in time maybe the police lose out. But it hardly seems worth it. It ought to be possible to serve warrant without instigating a violent encounter. And it's not like the risk of destruction of evidence is anything new. You could easily destroy evidence well bef…

I think the problem is that it's really hard to police recreational quantities of chemicals. Physical evidence related to crimes is usually either bulkier objects which you can't just put down the toilet, or documents which do take some time to destroy and often exist in multiple places.

A sane person would probably argue that you don't get to run roughshod over people's freedoms just because a particular law is hard to enforce otherwise. But I think that's where it's coming from. You get a pervasive environment where the guys at the top are trying to be tough on drugs and the guys at the bottom keep having to let criminals go because they flushed the evidence, and it's only natural that they'll start to push for more draconian measures.

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

#173

Post by 300bps »

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…

The biggest problem with the rant is that it only attacks symptoms of the underlying disease. The underlying disease is the nonsensical War On Drugs. End that and most of these symptoms go away on their own.

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

#174

Post by moggflunkies »

ganeumann wrote: post #155
opendais wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LOOOL

How about real life happens in your story:

- Look outs realize there is an anomalous vehicle staged in the neighborhood & alert the team. How do you not get detected?

- Drug dealers arn't home so they send a child/girlfriend to pickup the stash/cash from the home. Do you arrest and charge the 14 year old son of the dealer?

- Dope boys have children/women runners do the logistical aspects. Arrest the dealer, go in the house and find the stash, the girlfriend claims its hers. Dope boy walks free.

Congrats you have done nothing but charged a 14 year old relative and/or girlfriend of the dealer, alerted the hood that its under surveillance and your target flees to a different zone/state/country.

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

#175

Post by jrs235 »

If the police hadn't approached the home with confrontation in mind they may have noticed some other telling clues that the situation may not be what they thought it would be.

This is also the us (cops) versus "them" (non-cops) mentality and will lead to even more violent standoffs because situations like this will further lead non-cops to view cops no longer as "the good guys" which will lead the cops to view the...

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

300bps wrote: post #173
rayiner wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The biggest problem with the rant is that it only attacks symptoms of the underlying disease. The underlying disease is the nonsensical War On Drugs. End that and most of these symptoms go away on their own.

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by moggflunkies »

danielweber wrote: post #115
opendais wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't even need to have a cop in the unmarked car. You can have a remotely viewable camera that the desk-duty cop watches from the precinct headquarters. EDIT to address the troll: you can run these off of a car battery and stream it over the cellphone network. Quality will be rather good even then. If you can park a car, you can set up the camera. PTZ, too.

"don't mind me poor 100% black community im just here from ADT to install this randomly hallarious HD camera and wireless antenna facing this decrepit house"

king of non-suspicious behavior

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

#179

Post by jmccree »

dpeck wrote: post #114
jmccree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Atlanta made tons of changes after the Kathryn Johnson incident and the Atlanta Eagle raid. They totally disbanded the red dog unit, and have been much more sensitive to public perception after those events. I think more importantly this shows that these small county (Habersham, ~40k total county pop) police forces have no business having "SWAT" teams, much less doing no-knock drug raids.

I'd argue PR made any changes. Monetary damages have little to no affect on large orgs.

I can't argue with that, just felt the need to defend APD a bit, as a lot of people are confusing them with the redneck swat team who threw the flashbang into a crib. APD has changed a ton for the better after Turner became chief. Before that, Pennington from New Orleans PD was clearly a mistake for the city, and led to many of the largest APD scandals in recent history.

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

#180

Post by mikeash »

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…

Your question is why we have laws for how police can operate.

Yes, if I were in their shoes, I would not want to knock. Which is why we need to make it a legal requirement to. Don't give them a choice.

The police are playing an inherently rigged game. They operate with one hand tied behind their back, giving criminals an inherent advantage because criminals, by definition, don't worry about following the law. The only reason this works is because the police can bring to bear vastly greater resources and numbers, but their possible actions are much more limited.

And that's how it should be. The term for a place where the police have no limits on what they can do to bring in the bad guys is called a "police state".

I don't doubt that police really really want to handle situations like this with quick and decisive action. Which is exactly why they must not be allowed to.

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