Scale
The police will put on their ninja gear, grab their machine guns, kick your door down, and lob in some flashbang grenades to arrest you for student loan fraud, growing orchids illegally, and for less than 1/4 ounce of weed.
But if you’re an actual dangerous criminal suspected in 19 murders who has 20 guns in the house, they lure you out with a phone call.
Officer safety and all.
A friend in law enforcement once explained to me that after 9/11, podunk towns got Free Federal Funding for SWAT teams. Instead of realizing that BFE doesn’t need a bunch of ninjas and using that money for something else useful, most stuck with it because they like SWAT teams. Then they started using them on low-level arrests to justify their existence and also as part of training. No one really was outraged until a few people got killed.
June 27th, 2011 at 10:14 am
It is different when you are going after a proven killer… Don’t think for a second the cops get lulled into a false sense of security killing non criminals and minor criminals that do not shoot back… They have to handle REAL criminals carefully else they themselves might get hurt….
June 27th, 2011 at 10:32 am
The entry team is JUST for the non-violent offenders, and they have machine guns just to shoot dogs and murder war herons.
Classy!
June 27th, 2011 at 10:32 am
You forgot the “shoot your dog” part.
June 27th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Well, the SWAT raids have mostly been about taking over the space for searching. When and how they arrest determines what they can search without a warrant, officer safety again.
The real problem is these amateur SWAT teams can have things go sideways on them due to their inexperience and lack of serious training. The worst thing you can do is scare a cop, they react violently when they feel they are losing control of the situation.
Look Jose Guerena, they probably knew he was a vet, i.e., able to handle himself. They gave themselves away lolly-gagging around and when they saw him up and prepared, they shot the hell out of the place. That many bullets when he never even took his weapon off safe means they got scared.
June 27th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Pretty funny. Too bad they weren’t scared of David Koresh – who went out jogging and to the local grocery store every few days.
Whitey was a bad man. He killed men for talking to his girlfriend and he’s killed girlfriends for leaving him. Hell yeah, he would kill a cop breaking down his door.
June 28th, 2011 at 8:23 am
@Old Soldier:
Which is why whitey wasn’t arrested, until now. If “the people” were actually dangerous to the state, then the state would be scared of the people. As it stands now, they just see the people as tax cows and things that need to be lied to.
June 28th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
“A friend in law enforcement once explained to me that after 9/11, podunk towns got Free Federal Funding for SWAT teams. Instead of realizing that BFE doesn’t need a bunch of ninjas and using that money for something else useful, most stuck with it because they like SWAT teams. Then they started using them on low-level arrests to justify their existence and also as part of training. No one really was outraged until a few people got killed.”
This is one of the best explinations I have ever heard of this phenomenom. I recently left LE at a small dept. because of all the posers and the ridiculousness of a 35 man department having a 12 man SWAT team. Also a 20 foot trailer that never moved in 3 years for “terrorism related incidents.” A gigantic waste of money, time and this is what we get when SWAT teams that train once a month at paintballing kick in doors. It is crazy and if the taxpayers only knew a portion of the truth they would be disgusted. Great post and the website is AWESOME! Thanks for all of your work SayUncle!