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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

#231

Post by bluedino »

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 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.

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

#232

Post by malandrew »

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

The typical utility company truck (gas, electricity, water) can be parked outside and someone could install any number of objects that contain cameras/microphones, but don't look like one. Resorting to an obvious strawman does nothing.

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

#233

Post by SolarNet »

danielweber wrote: post #188
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…

It wasn't "we have to go in, better arm up." They could have watched the house and gathered more information. Since they have a warrant, are cops allowed to thermally image a house to get a headcount? Technical question: would that work or am I imagining something from TV?

Nah we don't have thermal imaging that precise yet, also, the thermal difference between outside the house and inside the house sort of washes away any lingering body heat you might be looking for in most cases.

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

#234

Post by Joeri »

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…

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When a police department forms a swat team, they're going to use it, even for minor offenses.

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

#235

Post by abritishguy »

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.

We have the same thing in the UK, you won't see any flash bangs being used here though.

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

#236

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by dllthomas »

anigbrowl wrote: post #116
dllthomas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need draconian measures; we need substantive and reliably enforced measures. People respond much more strongly to certainty of punishment than severity.

I hew to the economic view that they respond to the combination of the two, in contrast to this position paper: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%2... which I think begs the question. The problem is that certainty of punishment is difficult to achieve, especially where co-offenders have a strong incentive to back each other up - in this case, groups of police officers :-(

We should (for some value of "should") respond to the expected value plus something like the Kelly criterion. In practice, my understanding is that the research consistently shows that we are systematically less sensitive to severity than certainty. Of course the severity needs to be sufficient that it can't just be written off as a cost of doing business, but that is true long before we hit "draconian". You can insist that, in spite of the research, we're all perfect little economic calculators acting rationally, but know that you run significant chance of being wrong.

But sure, let's run with your assumption.

"The problem is that certainty of punishment is difficult to achieve"

"X is hard, therefore Y," without establishing that Y is worthwhile, is a piece of reasoning responsible for many ills. Yes, it's a cost-benefit thing, but bear the following points in mind:

When you have (X * Y) in general, and X >> Y, you can make a much bigger difference with a small change to Y than a big change to X (unless it's an exceptionally big change to X).

Costs of long term imprisonment scales with the medical needs of the people we're imprisoning, which is much faster than linear.

Draconian sentencing means we're doing harm to the those we falsely convict (which will inevitably be above zero); this means increasing the risk to innocent officers, which lowers the quality of officers we can recruit.

"especially where co-offenders have a strong incentive to back each other up - in this case, groups of police officers :-("

This is a tremendous issue, for sure, but it is one that needs to be resolved for a whole host of reasons, of which this is only one.

Note that a more draconian sentence reinforces this - if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting sent up for life, I'm more concerned (and therefore, presumably, more willing to stretch the truth) than if I think there's a chance my innocent buddy is getting a slap on the wrist - so if I'm mistaken about my buddy's innocence, raising X might actually decrease Y. (Actually, that holds even if I think my buddy is guilty of something that doesn't deserve so stiff a penalty...)

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

#238

Post by hyperliner »

devnonymous wrote: post #32

America is a scary country to live in. I am not sure if it is just the fact that this sort of thing gets reported more often of late ...only for America, or just that I've been paying more attention of late. The number of places and the absurdity of the manner in which you can get killed, hurt, jailed, or have your entire life irrecoverably change is just frightening. Now, I don't intend to be Anti-American, I alread…

America is among the top places we got in this planet, though.

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

#239

Post by id »

tlrobinson wrote: post #55
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.

"I can't really imagine how Americans manage to normally live their lives." This is truly awful, but the vast majority of Americans will never be subject to a SWAT raid or anything like it (especially if they're not involved in illegal activity). Or terrorist attacks. Or mass shootings. Or etc etc. People are notoriously bad at estimating the probability rare but extreme events will happen to them. Of course, that do…

>People are notoriously bad at estimating the probability rare but extreme events will happen to them.

Yes, people are known to underestimate the likelihood of such events happening to them relative to others.

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias

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

#240

Post by talmand »

bluedino wrote: post #231
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 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.
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