Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think it will ever end?
Nothing lasts forever. See Entropy.
Does entropy last forever?
A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
451–460 of 464 posts
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
A scale with a bit of powder on it does not demand 10+ years in prison. A gun, if registered (and it's not like all dealers have illegal guns) carries no penalty in and of itself. They (the cops) need something to barter with. You're much more likely to get useful information from someone facing 10+ years than someone facing 1 year (6 months with good behavior) or probation. They want to find everything.
Registered??? In most of the US, and I suspect for most of the population, there is no such thing as registering guns (that would be akin to registering laser printers, especially those high capacity ones). On the other hand it's illegal for a drug user to possess a firearm, 18 USC § 922(g): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/922
Interesting choice of example, as it happens there is in fact a "printer registry", where documents can be traced back to the device that produced them: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
(it's just that the average consumer doesn't know about it)
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Registered??? In most of the US, and I suspect for most of the population, there is no such thing as registering guns (that would be akin to registering laser printers, especially those high capacity ones). On the other hand it's illegal for a drug user to possess a firearm, 18 USC § 922(g): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/922
Interesting choice of example, as it happens there is in fact a "printer registry", where documents can be traced back to the device that produced them: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/ (it's just that the average consumer doesn't know about it)
There's a much tighter serial number system used for guns, all the way to a BATF Form 4473 (https://www.atf.gov/files/forms/download/atf-f-4473-1.pdf) that's required for the first retail sale.
To the extent there's any tracking of printers, it would at most tell you which store it was sold from, there isn't any required serial number recording done at checkout (well, as of when I last bought a color printer in 2006).
What you're referring to would be akin to comparing a bullet found at the scene of a crime with one fired from a seized weapon, albeit easier; a comparison system. Much less of a privacy concern, without any required "registration" involved.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I got that. But the link doesn't show it's all that common either. Basically none since 2011, and America is a big country. A handful a year across 330 million people is too many, but not nearly as common as the European and my parent are making it out to be.
The raids are very common. Just because people don't die very often doesn't mean they're reasonable. Pointing rifles at innocent people practically indiscriminately ("wrong place, wrong time, now STFU citizen"), not letting parents attend to their scared and/or wounded children... there's just no justification for that. It doesn't make it safer for suspects. It doesn't make it safer for police. It's certainly not saf…
Are you arguing against my point, or against someone else? Your first sentence could be a reply to me, but you're making a claim that contradicts the evidence that I'm arguing against, and you present no new evidence. Just saying "it's common" doesn't make it so. The rest of your post has nothing to do with anything I've said, so I will assume you meant to reply to someone else.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
You asserted that crimes where the police might need to barge in without knocking in order to prevent destruction of evidence are most likely nonviolent crimes. In fact, that kind of situation is almost exclusively drug crime, and the drug world is a violent place. As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the t…
It has been about a day without a response so I'm assuming you lack such sources/evidence to support your claim.
You are demanding data to support the idea that drug rings are associated with violence. That demand does not suggest to me that this will lead to a productive conversation regardless of how I answer. So if you want to believe that associates of Mexican drug lords are all hippie antiwar activists, I guess I am not going to be the one to disabuse you of that notion.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Seems optimistic to me. If you flush in rapid succession the reservoir has to fill again. I guess that a good flush requires, depending on circumstances, 20s of refilling. That would lower the throughput significantly. Also, the suspect has to move the cocaine from hiding to the toilet. Sure, $20K is a lot of money but were not talking Pablo Escobar-like quantities here. Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happen…
Cocaine is far more water soluble than baking soda. Extremely, extremely water soluble -- about 2 grams of cocaine can dissolve in 1 ml of water (compare to baking soda: About .1 grams per ml of water)
You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems optimistic to me. If you flush in rapid succession the reservoir has to fill again. I guess that a good flush requires, depending on circumstances, 20s of refilling. That would lower the throughput significantly. Also, the suspect has to move the cocaine from hiding to the toilet. Sure, $20K is a lot of money but were not talking Pablo Escobar-like quantities here. Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happen…
Cocaine is far more water soluble than baking soda. Extremely, extremely water soluble -- about 2 grams of cocaine can dissolve in 1 ml of water (compare to baking soda: About .1 grams per ml of water) You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine.
"You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine."
At least, you can't afford to.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#458Earlier 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.
I posted this above as well, but cocaine is extremely water soluble -- 2 grams per ml of water will dissolve, or a little over 20 times the solubility of baking soda. Even with a low-flow modern 1.28 gallon toilet, it certainly wouldn't "clump up" -- more like instantly disintegrate.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has been about a day without a response so I'm assuming you lack such sources/evidence to support your claim.
You are demanding data to support the idea that drug rings are associated with violence. That demand does not suggest to me that this will lead to a productive conversation regardless of how I answer. So if you want to believe that associates of Mexican drug lords are all hippie antiwar activists, I guess I am not going to be the one to disabuse you of that notion.
Actually, I'm demanding data that drug arrests are more dangerous than other arrests. Or really any data supporting your position in general.
I'm not sure how that wasn't clear when I explicitly stated it.
Instead of doing this, you continue to make up ridiculous misrepresentations of what I've said.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants. // Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. As in this case where apparently there was an AK47 in the house.
What's odd about there being a rifle in the house? In many places owning rifles is fairly normal.
There's nothing especially odd about it, there are lots of non-violent reasons to have an automatic assault rifle in an urban environment. /s
The point is that trying to arrest a drug dealer who has an assault rifle provides more potential for being shot than trying to arrest one that does not. To mitigate the chance of being seriously injured the police tool up in order that they might, if not strike before they are hurt, respond with appropriate force to a violent attempt to evade arrest.