Botched Paramilitary Police Raids June 12, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : Criminal Justice, Government , trackbackWhile reading the white paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids,” by Radley Balko. I have actually been shocked, something that takes reaching a pretty high threshold to occur.
“Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.”
I would strongly suggest reading this in your spare time for you to get the magnitude of how our law enforcement philosophy has changed. I can not think how we throw our hands up as thousand come into this country illegally but have no qualms about using a paramilitary force on our own people many times based on the word of a informant who has a reason to be dishonest.
Check out the map below to get an idea of the scope of the botched raids and the cost in citizens lives today, here in America. We are overseas protecting others freedoms while at home the government is becoming tyrannical. Go figure. Have American men become so neutered there is nothing in our homeland worth fighting for?
Botched Paramilitary Police Raids: An Interactive MapThomas Jefferson once said, “Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither.” When we start calling the miliraty police and use them on our own citizens we should see the bigger picture. How much will we tolerate as a people?
Post 9/11 it has gotten even worse. You can paint is as terrorism but it is expanding government and the force it uses on its own people. Patrick Henry summed up the feelings of his peers when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Patrick Henry knew that liberty came with certain risks, but facing those risks was far superior to living safely in chains or under military guard for my safety.
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