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

#291

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:19 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #197

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…

> 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. This is almost certainly not true, especially with modern executive interpretations that 'due process' in the law simply means any established process. Do you have any references for this?

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by berberous » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:19 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #197

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…

> 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. This is almost certainly not true, especially with modern executive interpretations that 'due process' in the law simply means any established process. Do you have any references for this?

I'm not sure what your reference to "executive interpretations" is about, but the level of process that is due has been determined through case law. The test for the past 30+ years has been a balancing test that considers the following factors:

"Three factors are relevant in determining what process is constitutionally due: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the Government's interest." See Mathews v. Eldridge.

Here's one case[1] I found in which the Supreme Court appears to allow an officer to be suspended without pay, but due to his having been charged with a felony. In such a case, the government's interest in suspension without pay is greater, and from skimming the opinion, it appears that a significant factor was that a grand jury found probable cause to indict the officer.

[1] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/520/924/case.html

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

#293

Post by ameister14 » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:21 PM UTC

moggflunkies wrote: post #174

ganeumann wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Instead, why don't you attack the house where his child and girlfriend/grandma are sleeping? Is that a better solution? Doesn't that turn the town/neighborhood/village against you? Kill someone's kid and they'll never trust anyone that looks like you again; they'll probably try to kill you if they can, and they definitely won't help you with information. Neither will their friends or relatives.

Why would you care if the target flees to another zone/state/country? They're out of your hair and without contacts, they won't be nearly as effective in their objectives.

Since we're talking domestic, they're not nearly as likely to flee to another country or state; people are tied to neighborhoods. Sure, if they're alerted to your surveillance your job gets a lot harder, but that doesn't matter to the innocent.

Crime is down, and police are dangerous. That's the environment we have now. If middle class white people fear the police more than criminals, the police have a problem, and the government has a problem. That prevents them from doing their jobs as well.

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

#294

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:22 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #75

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…

>SWAT teams in the US are utterly out of control. America is dominated by cults of violence, cults of death. Its military-industrial groups do nothing but produce death and destruction at the press of a button, and yet Americans do nothing about it. This problem won't go away until the real issue is address: the utter lack of humility in your average public, and dire amounts of arrogance in the ruling elite. It is pu…

The real problem is that the war on drugs if fantastically profitable for everyone involved: drug cartels, police, and for-profit prisons alike. Just look at the original criminalization of marijuana (and indeed the English adoption of the Mexican word used to invoke racist hatred and fear) which was basically spearheaded by Dow so they could sell their inferior synthetic substitutes for hemp.

Legalizing drugs would make all the violence go away over night, and let us spend the money directly on the social problems drugs cause (which obviously haven't been reduced in the least be criminalization).

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

#295

Post by bmelton » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:22 PM UTC

moggflunkies wrote: post #178

danielweber wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Having built them for the ATF, there are concealable cameras that mount to light poles and run off grid power. There are also concealable cameras that look like fire hydrants, high voltage signs, rocks, and cars that are designed to feed the video back wirelessly and be rapidly deployable.

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

#296

Post by EpicEng » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:23 PM UTC

thathonkey wrote: post #171

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)

You could easily flush a couple of kilos of cocaine. Owning a couple kilos of coke makes you a fairly successful mid-level dealer who must know people higher up on the food chain.

P.S. I'm not defending the cops here, just saying, you don't need truck fulls of drugs to be considered "big-time", and they usually get to the bigger fish via the smaller ones.

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

#297

Post by EpicEng » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:26 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 hate the "war on drugs" and the levels to which the police take it, but the only person who said "a small amount of drugs" was the parent. I can't imagine that a SWAT team would be used for a "small amount of drugs".

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

#298

Post by thathonkey » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:26 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #296

thathonkey wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

You could easily flush a couple of kilos of cocaine. Owning a couple kilos of coke makes you a fairly successful mid-level dealer who must know people higher up on the food chain. P.S. I'm not defending the cops here, just saying, you don't need truck fulls of drugs to be considered "big-time", and they usually get to the bigger fish via the smaller ones.

I edited my example to make it a little better. Point being: If you are a big enough dealer to be useful to the police in a larger investigation (or to warrant SWAT team "no-knocking" at your door), you probably have quite a bit of related evidence that would not fit down a toilet.

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

#299

Post by ufmace » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:27 PM UTC

jdcarter wrote: post #154

chillingeffect wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's disturbing is how many of them are based on a single informant and also look like not the slightest effort was made to verify that information. Literally picking up a guy off the street for some minor crime, telling him you'll let him go for a bigger fish, getting an address from him, and sending in the goons without another thought. If it's a big enough crime to justify a SWAT raid, then surely it's big enough for just a little bit of investigation.

It seems dangerous in two ways. Both that most of these tips are probably for completely innocent people who may now be subject to extreme levels of violence with no justification, and that once in a while, one of them might be for something much worse than they thought, putting the officers themselves in a lot of unnecessary danger because they didn't do any investigation.

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

#300

Post by anon4 » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 7:27 PM UTC

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…

Long term? Make these sorts of stories public, demand change, write to your representatives, write to the media. Takes about 40 to 80 years.

Short term? 1/2 meter thick concrete walls and doors, barred windows. Though that might set off alarms for the police, so a better solution would be a bunker space under your house where you sleep and spend your time indoors. Of course also have a bedroom above ground so you can claim you slept in your bunker because you were working late on a project that day and they just caught. When they knock, put on riot gear. I mean, your welder suit.

Or maybe it would be safest to get sent to prison for life, at least there the most danger you have to look out for is getting stabbed by someone doing it for fun, rather than blown up by a guy doing it for the good of society.