Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 464 posts

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

#221

Post by jpindar »

kika wrote: post #193
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…

> Premediated murder requires specific intent to kill. Even if the kid had died, it would most likely be negligent homicide. Honest question: I'm walking past the somebody's house with an assault grenade in my hand. I feel miserable and I throw the grenade into the window. 5 people die. Is that negligence? I didn't know whose house is it, is there any people there, etc.

It depends. Are you a cop?

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

#222

Post by scarmig »

dublinben wrote: post #64
prteja11 wrote: post #31

Atlanta continues to amaze me. On one hand, I see reports every week from the police department at my school (downtown atlanta)about robberies/ mugging (armed) with usually no police officers around to help. The response times are usually >20 minutes (usually because they are way understaffed). And on the other, I see militarized police brutality. I wish there is a way to funnel my tax dollars to those departments th…

>those departments that are going to help people rather than hurt them When you find a police department that fits this definition, please let us all know. I'm skeptical it's even a possibility.

There are some countries where police typically don't even typically carry around projectile weapons. The UK, for instance.

I think making sure police have some skin in the game, instead of pursuing the illusory chase of perfect security for them, is the answer. It's supposed to be public service, after all.

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

wdewind wrote: post #33
iagooar wrote: post #25

When I read stuff like this, I'm really happy that I am not living in the US. It sounds so crazy to a European person, I can't really imagine how Americans manage to normally live their lives.

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.

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by nathanb »

What can we do about this?

Like many of the commenters here, this article fills me with outrage. Even given the possibility/probability (as mentioned by iambateman) that the target of the SWAT team was guilty of meth pushing, armed, and dangerous.

What can an individual do to effect change? The executive branch seem to be nigh-invulnerable these days. Checks and balances don't work when it's the enforcement arm who need to be kept in check.

Is there something productive I and others can do rather than sitting here powerless in anger?

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

#225

Post by matwood »

jnbiche wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/pok…

I love it. A SWAT raid to hand out some $100 citations. It probably cost more in gas to fill up the MRAP.

http://www.scnow.com/news/local/article_3506ee8e-1bce-11e3-b...

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

#226

Post by thoth »

kika wrote: post #193
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…

> Premediated murder requires specific intent to kill. Even if the kid had died, it would most likely be negligent homicide. Honest question: I'm walking past the somebody's house with an assault grenade in my hand. I feel miserable and I throw the grenade into the window. 5 people die. Is that negligence? I didn't know whose house is it, is there any people there, etc.

For starters, you should read the Illustrated Guide to Law (http://lawcomic.net/guide/?page_id=5) and perhaps buy the print copy of the book. Focus on Chapter 6, about Mens Rea, and Chapter 8, Actus Reus.

Then figure out whether the jury is going to believe that you didn't intend to harm anybody when you threw a grenade into a house.

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

#227

Post by dTal »

stonemetal wrote: post #131
tinkerrr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

2 in 2014, 0 in 2012, 6 in 2011. Don't know what happened to their 2013 data but ~8 in three or four years shows how rare an event it is.

There were not 0 in 2012: http://www.infowars.com/man-dies-in-police-raid-on-wrong-hou... (Apologies for infowars, but the source - ABC News - inexplicably omits the date)

The past 4 years seem anomalous - compare the previous four years:

2010 - 19 2009 - 12 2008 - 22 2007 - 16

Much as I'd like to think Obama has single-handedly reformed all of the police departments in the US, I think it rather more likely there's something wrong with the data.

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

#228

Post by ajsharp »

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…

> 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.

Nope, not unconstitutional, not even close. The constitution has literally nothing to say about suspending someone's ability to work due to arrests and legal proceedings, because it's not a set of guidelines for prosecution, it's a foundation for lawmakers and the judicial system by which to form and judge laws and crimes.

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

Assets are frozen during criminal proceedings all the time. Ironically, especially for drug-related prosecutions (big ones, albeit, and for good reason).

> 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.

TOTALLY. Luckily, we have the magical judicial system, which is built to handle cases, you know, individual instances where the law is either broken or does not provide enough clarity, and thus, case trial can help to narrow the meaning of laws. They can also award compensatory and punitive damages, which seem more than justified in this particular instance.

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

#229

Post by chc »

danielsiders wrote: post #87
Glyptodon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also in general the severity of the charge is directly proportional to the quantity of drugs. So if the quantity is instantly flushable, how serious of a charge can it have been, and thus how much accidental damage is acceptable in the arrest?

OK, so, to the best of my knowledge, 1 kg of cocaine is worth about $20K. Assuming cocaine has roughly the density of baking soda, this amount ought to be easily disposable in a single flush. So you could flush $100K worth of coke down a toilet in under a minute.
Post reply on HN