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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

#281

Post by vlunkr »

johngalt wrote: post #242
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…

The police threw a grenade into an innocent child's crib. Nothing you've said ends in '...and that's why they clearly had to burn a hole two year old'. > Don't be a criminal and don't associate with criminals and this doesn't happen to you. Ok, but how far does this 'association' go? Where is your line where the excessive police response isn't justified. We can already see that your line is past throwing grenades at…

Thank you for this. It's true that associating with criminals makes it more likely that things like this will happen to you, but that doesn't justify it. A child getting hospitalized is excessive collateral damage for something indirectly related to the family.

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

#282

Post by justin66 »

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…

> The Cato institute has worked with journalist Radley Balko (who is the expert in this area) to produce a map of botched SWAT raids: http://www.cato.org/raidmap

That's a really bad map. "Botched" is such an arbitrary term and it doesn't capture the way a perfectly executed raid will often damage lives. ("we only terrorized their kids! standard procedure.")

The data is pretty obviously woefully incomplete. Does anyone actually believe that that there have been only 13 "unnecessary raids on doctors or sick people" in the last 30 years? Those are the ones the author knows about. It's an infographic that hides as much as it reveals.

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

#283

Post by jqm »

jonnathanson wrote: post #192
jacquesm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Exactly. Police believe themselves to be at war. Not with one-off groups of armed bank robbers, per se, but with heavily militarized cartels and street gangs like MS-13. If an ordinary police unit knocked on the door of an MS-13 safe house, they'd probably be met with heavily armed resistance. The problems here are numerous. First, because this was not a cartel safe house, and any degree of diligence sufficient to ob…

Maybe they violently raid the easy targets whilst ignoring the more dangerous ones.

That's my suspicion.

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

#284

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

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.

Prohibition 101:

1. The act being prohibited is nonviolent; injecting heroin, for example, involves zero violence.

2. The prohibition itself creates the violent black market organizations; if heroin were legal, the black market organizations wouldn't exist.

3. Thus yes, nonviolent laws.

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

#285

Post by giardini »

clarkmoody wrote: post #99
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.

I think the mentality among the police is "I'm going home tonight, no matter what." Given the opportunity to wear body armor and carry a rifle when confronting a perceived threat, many will take it.

This.

Background: it's long been known that law enforcement officers (LEOs) are _safer_ on the job than non-LEOs. Only an unfortunate few die in violent encounters with the criminal elements. When LEOs scream about how dangerous their job is, they're almost always asking for a pay raise.

Nonetheless, there was a time in the not-so-remote past when LEOs _consciously__accepted_ the possibility that they might die or be injured on the job. That attitude is fast disappearing.

Once one accepts the analogy that "battling crime" (where any "enemy" is poorly defined; those are civilians out there) is equivalent to warfare (where the enemy is well-defined and no quarter given), then one can almost unconsciously accept a "better him than me" attitude where the civilians' lives are, relative to LEO's, worthless.

The creeping acceptance of warfare's "better him than me" attitude by LEOs and police departments is the root of the problem.

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

#286

Post by scurvyscott »

conductr wrote: post #194
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.

America is a weird place. If we collectively felt it was out of control or being abused we would fight back through law or force if it got to that point. We're generally just glad to have those options. I think this is a topic where the legal fight is ramping up. These stories are becoming too common and though currently "legal" it just reeks of negligence.

I'm of the unfortunate opinion that Americans are too pacified and complacent to actually step up and do anything against the government. I would love to see people reacting with force and violence at a system that is so oppressive and belligerent.

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

#287

Post by vegardx »

Floegipoky wrote: post #269
metacorrector wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, the grenade that was thrown is not part of no-knock, it's because of the extreme violence that gang style criminals are apt to use. You could have no-knock raids to capture evidence without needing to stun everybody.

It's technically possible, but in practice that's never how it works. The entire purpose behind no-knock is to take them by surprise before they can even think about resisting. They use immediately overwhelming "non-lethal" force so that they never have to escalate to a "lethal" level. Obviously the definitions of these terms are imprecise at best. Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyo…

What if, you know, they did knock, then the law-abiding gun owner would come and open the door, like in most of the civilized world. Or take them when they are out, wait for them to get home, etc. There are numerous ways to make an arrest without going all commando.

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

#288

Post by thathonkey »

talmand wrote: post #240
bluedino wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine down the average toilet in a matter of minutes I would think you could - that's the 'brick' size you see in the movies, I would guess you could flush that down in 2-3 flushes as long as it didn't clump up too bad.

Easy solution. Turn off the water to the house and they'll get one flush, two at the most.

That is way too logical and cost-effective. Plus then they wouldn't get to use the cool-as-shit flashbangs that their dept got on the cheap.

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

#289

Post by dragontamer »

nathanb wrote: post #224

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 n…

1. Understand the structure of the system. SWAT teams and local police are a local problem, not a national one. Cases like this will happen all around the country, but there really isn't anything you can do about it. It is up to the local population to elect their police chiefs (or... elect mayors / governors who choose good police chiefs).

2. The "Executive Branch" of Obama honestly has nothing to do with this. Understanding where you place your efforts is important. You can try and make this a national issue, but it isn't one.

3. Recognize that state departments and local police are going to do things you don't like, especially when you're far away and hold no control over them.

The US has a federal system. Its the power we've given to local officials to run localities the way they like. Now, if we are to make this a national issue, we'll have to pass something in Congress as a nation... something that seems very unlikely given the gridlock on the national law system at the moment.

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

#290

Post by doe88 »

Floegipoky wrote: post #269
metacorrector wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, the grenade that was thrown is not part of no-knock, it's because of the extreme violence that gang style criminals are apt to use. You could have no-knock raids to capture evidence without needing to stun everybody.

It's technically possible, but in practice that's never how it works. The entire purpose behind no-knock is to take them by surprise before they can even think about resisting. They use immediately overwhelming "non-lethal" force so that they never have to escalate to a "lethal" level. Obviously the definitions of these terms are imprecise at best. Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyo…

> Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyone involved.

Tell that to this child and to his parents.

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