| |
12/01/08
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
Which Police force do you want in your community?
Who Will S.W.A.T. Wage War on NEXT?
I don't know if the SWAT teams have taken a week or two off, or we are just not hearing about their activities. Since I can't find any stories of current SWAT misadventures, this is a good time to post older material for those who want to learn more about what has already happened and some of the trends we need to watch for. Don't hesitate to send us any news you find about SWAT activity. ML
Who
Wills the End, Wills the Means A serious effort to stamp out illegal immigration in this country would face much the same problems—and, for the power-hungry, offer the same opportunities. Like drugs, illegal immigration is easy to conceal, creates no victims to go to the police, is in high demand, and pours over the border in massive quantities. This is important, because it shows how the government can be expected to act. The prohibitions on immigration and immigrant labor that some libertarians favor would not be enforced by some idealized minarchist constitutional republic. They would be enforced by the state that actually exists today, with the personnel that state has and the incentives those personnel face. In other words, any real-world program to clamp down on illegal immigrants and those who employ them would be run by the same people who brought you no-knock midnight SWAT raids on suspected drug users, property forfeiture without trial, the gutting of the right to privacy and due process, and the deaths of dozens of innocents at the hands of the increasingly militarized police. Much as pro-war/interventionist libertarians forget everything they know about the state's competence and benevolence when warfare and the idea of transforming foreign cultures into modern democracies comes up, anti-immigration libertarians often seem to switch to an uncharacteristically rosy view of the government on this issue.
9/11
Toxic Dust Whistleblower Raided By SWAT Team A 9/11 toxic dust whistleblower, a ground zero hero and one of the individuals influential in the release of documents proving a government cover-up that deliberately put police, firemen and rescue personel at risk, has been raided by a New York SWAT team - who ransacked his home for three hours after he was arrested. Major Mike McCormack is a hospital technician and civil air patrol pilot who worked the ground zero site for eight days after the collapse of the twin towers. He is one of the real heroes of 9/11 and was the man who found the American flag that was later displayed as a token of unity atop the rubble. (See the rest at the source)
Home
Invasion: Racial Disparities in SWAT Raids There are past cases in Urbana-Champaign where the use of SWAT teams has ended in tragedy. On December 11, 1998, the News-Gazette covered the story of an 81 year-old African American woman who claimed she was grabbed by the neck and thrown to the floor by Champaign’s SWAT team and had to go to the hospital for injuries. The Champaign SWAT team was there to serve a outstanding warrant from Wisconsin to the woman’s grandson, who was not even in the house at the time. Last year, on May 11, 2006, Champaign police received a call from Garden Hills, about Carl “Dennis” Stewart, a suicidal black man alone in his car with a gun. The Champaign police called out the SWAT team and rolled out their prized Armored Personnel Carrier. After a four-hour standoff, Stewart was chased down the street by the APC. Cornered by police, he put the gun to his head and killed himself. According to one study, in cities with a population of at least 50,000, 90 percent have at least one SWAT team. This figure has doubled since the mid-1980s. In Champaign-Urbana, with a population of around 100,000, we have two SWAT teams, Champaign’s and the County’s. The first SWAT team in Urbana-Champaign goes back to 1985, when the University of Illinois and the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office formed the Tactical Response Unit. In 1991, the Urbana Police Department joined and the name was changed to the Metropolitan Emergency Tactical Response Operations (METRO) team. Today, METRO is a multi-jurisdictional operation that also includes police from Rantoul, Mahomet, and Champaign. The Champaign Police Department has the resources to maintain its own SWAT team, information on which is hard to find. After 9-11, Champaign purchased an Armored Personnel Carrier with funds provided by Homeland Security. It is essentially an armored truck converted for police use. Although it is not marked as a police vehicle, it can be identified by the gun slots in the doors. Champaign has recently purchased a second armored tank, innocuously called a “Rescue Vehicle,” as if it were the same as a fire truck or ambulance. (See the rest at the source)
Overkill:
The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America “These elite [police SWAT] units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it. They enjoy it. The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join. The problem is that when you talk about the war on this, and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy.”–Prof. Peter B. Kraska “Polite, Professional, and Prepared to Kill”–Title of article by Chris Barfield published in SWAT Magazine in December 2005 “Power is a heady thing.”–Justice William O. Douglas At 9:35 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006, in Fairfax county, Virginia, a police SWAT team, armed to the teeth, decked out in battle fatigues, helmets, flak vests, and other military accouterments, arrived at the townhouse of Dr. Salvatore J. Culosi, Jr., a 37-year old optometrist. Culosi was a suspected bookie who had been making illegal sports bets from his home, and Fairfax police had obtained a warrant for his arrest and a search warrant to search his residence for gambling paraphernalia. Culosi had no history of violent behavior and his alleged crimes were nondangerous, but the practice in Fairfax county is for the local SWAT team to serve almost all search warrants. The unarmed, unresisting Culosi was in front of his residence when they arrived, weapons drawn in accordance with police protocol. As they began encircling Culosi, one of the officers, apparently accidentally, fired his large .45 cal. Heckler & Koch handgun, striking Culosi in the chest and killing him instantly. Predictably, the fearsome, fascistic trend towards militarizing American police by, among other things, transforming the serving of warrants into paramilitary commando operations, had resulted once again in lethal police violence and the unjustified death of an American citizen. (See the rest at the source)
Published in slightly abridged form in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (July 30, 2003). There is a caselaw update at the end of the article. For additional information on the dangers posed by the militarization of the police, see Radley Balko, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (2006); Peter B. Kraska (ed.), Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police (2001); Tony Jefferson, The Case Against Paramilitary Policing (1990); Koplow, Tangled Up in Khaki and Blue: Lethal and Non-Lethal Weapons in Recent Confrontations, 36 Geo. J. Int’l L. 703 (2005). See also Wilkes, SWATstiska Policing, Flagpole Magazine, p. 7 (September 6, 2006). “If this were happening in any other country in the world, this incredible militarization of the police, the incredible expansion of police power, the increase in police weaponry, the decrease in defendants’ rights, the incredible stockpiling of bodies behind prison walls, we’d be screaming.”–Fletcher, “I Shall Hear You No Further,” 27 Vt. L. Rev. 565, 582 n. 52 (quoting Van Jones, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights). At 6 a.m., on Friday, May 16, 2003, 57-year old Alberta Spruill was in her residence, Apartment 6F at 310 W. 143rd Street in the Harlem section of New York City, preparing to leave for work. Spruill, a quiet, church-going lady, was a municipal worker, employed at the Division of Citywide Administrative Services. She had been a city employee for 29 years, and each weekday would take the bus to her job. To her, that Friday morning must have seemed like the beginning of just another ordinary day. She mercifully did not know that she would never again head for work, that she had in fact but two hours to live because she was soon to be killed by the police even though she was an innocent citizen. (See the rest at the source)
An Epidemic of "Isolated Incidents" "If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern." —Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006. Website shows large map with detailed information about these raids and their consequences.
Send us any SWAT stories you find! Include title and link. |
|
||||||||||||
 |
|
