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

51–60 of 464 posts

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

#51

Post by jmccree »

dpeck wrote: post #12
astrodust wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not normally a fan of litigation, but in this case they should sue the police department into the ground. If this behaviour was way too expensive to sustain because of liabilities, they'd have to curtail it. Complaints are something they just ignore. Settlements hurt . If this was some national security incident where the nephew was about to activate a nuclear weapon this sort of force might be justified. That it…

Sadly this doesn't seem to work. There is little to no correlation between settlements and the divisions within an organization that they are supposed to punish, especially for large jurisdictions. Atlanta, small for a "big" city and with a terribly low budget relative to its size set its 2014 budget at 550M. A few million dollar wrongful death/abuse settlements each year don't even get noticed.

I'm not so sure. Atlanta made tons of changes after the Kathryn Johnson incident and the Atlanta Eagle raid. They totally disbanded the red dog unit, and have been much more sensitive to public perception after those events. I think more importantly this shows that these small county (Habersham, ~40k total county pop) police forces have no business having "SWAT" teams, much less doing no-knock drug raids.

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

#52

Post by opendais »

angersock wrote: post #45
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.

One wonders--if the evidence is so easily destroyed, how great could the crime actually be? It's not like they're feeding a body into a wood-chipper or anything.

It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.

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

#53

Post by simplemath »

malandrew wrote: post #36
jordan0day wrote: post #6

The increasing militarization of police in the USA has seemingly had a significant (and hopefully unintended) side-effect: Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens , but as enemy combatants .

Is this enough to be able to challenge the constitutionality out of SWAT team usage and no-knock warrants, based on the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. For example, in this case, the police were looking for one individual and found a family inside. Shouldn't the police treat them all as innocent instead of enemy combatants until they've positively identified the suspect? If we have to err between…

>If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make

You're right -it was appallingly easy for them to decide that they can do as they please.

Given the prison/police/military industrial complex fueling our massive, unprecedented in world history, Third Estate and the utter lack of any meaningful political opposition to it, things will get worse before they get better.

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

#54

Post by dvere »

itbeho wrote: post #23

I was at a State Park in California recently and had a friendly talk with a ranger about local places to visit. It was hard not to notice the AR-15 and Shotgun mounted in his truck, as well as the sidearm on his hip. I'd never seen that before in all my years of camping with family.

The other side of the drug culture. They're some very nasty, and well armed folks using public lands to grow pot.

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

#55

Post by tlrobinson »

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 doesn't make this ok. I personally believe SWAT team usage should be restricted to hostage, active shooter, and similar situations.

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

#56

Post by Tycho »

Maybe flashbang grenades are too dangerous to throw around without warning?!

There was a story I saw yesterday about police shooting a 95yr old WW2 veteran in his own home because he didn't want to leave and was brandishing a knife. They were bean bag rounds but they shot him 6 times from close range and he died.

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

#57

Post by jacquesm »

DrJones1098 wrote: post #39
giarc wrote: post #10

These stories seem fake to me. I know they are real but I have trouble believing that people, human beings would actually act like this. Why do we have people acting as police that wouldn't let a mother comfort her crying, very injured child. They weren't after her, she wasn't the criminal.

Are you being serious? In Mexico the narco terrorists pulled innocent people off of a bus and made them pit fight to the death for their amusement. http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-crook... In the middle ages they would impale you on a spike so that you died slowly over days. In Rwanda one tribe butchered 5 million people of another tribe with machetes. An that's just examples I can think of off…

You do realize you're comparing the present day United States law enforcement with Rwandean tribes, Mexican narco-terrorists and the middle ages?

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

#58

Post by agwa »

thathonkey wrote: post #16

This is a side-effect of police militarization that doesn't get much attention from its critics: using advanced military equipment should also require advanced military training. Local police agencies that receive all this new military-spec equipment don't always get (or more likely, never get) the funding for necessary training on how to use it. Much less does such training really exist since this stuff was all desi…

Lack of proper military training is not the problem here. The problem is the militarization in the first place. In war, collateral damage is considered unavoidable and ultimately acceptable in pursuit of victory, which is why drug warriors accept that the occasional baby will be maimed by a flashbang. That sort of approach is unacceptable for domestic law-enforcement. The solution is to roll back the militarization, not double down by giving police more military training.
Post reply on HN