Gangsters in Blue

On the one hand, I guess it’s a plus that they at least repair the damage they do to innocent people’s homes. That’s more than can be said for many police departments across the country.

On the other hand, the fact that there’s a permanent unit in place to deal with wrong-door raids (and the reporter’s seeming nonchalance about it all) suggests that we’ve reached to the point where innocent people occasionally getting terrorized—and should they have the temerity to reach for a gun to defend themselves—possibly killed, is basically an understood and accepted consequence of fighting the drug war. That’s pretty unsettling.

Note also that the article says there were at least eight wrong-door raids in L.A. last year. I don’t remember reading about any of them—and I get Google News alerts, Lexis notifications, and reader emails just about any time a botched raid makes the news. More evidence that these raids are hitting the wrong house far more often than is reported in newspapers.

Incidentally, something similar happened in New York City in the late 1990s. Civil rights groups were becoming increasingly concerned about the number of botched raids showing up in the city’s newspapers. NYPD insisted that "wrong door" raids almost never happened—until an internal memo was leaked that instructed officers how to quietly notify repair men and locksmiths to fix busted doors. The wrong-door death of Alberta Spruill in 2003 sparked promises of reform, but within a few years it was back to business as usual.

Thanks to Mike Lombino for the link. 

The Arkansas bailiff who nearly killed a woman after mistakenly locking her in a holding cell over a four-day weekend will get to keep his job.

I particularly like the commenters to the story who say they have no sympathy for the woman “because she’s an illegal alien.” Guess I’ll just never understand the anger and utter lack of humanity coming from the anti-immigration crowd.

Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!

Today, March 15^th, commemorates the assassination of two tyrants. Today is the 2,051^st anniversary — give or take the relevant calendar adjustments — of the death of Gaius Julius Caesar, the military dictator who butchered his way through Gaul, set fire to Alexandria, and, through years of conquest, perfidy, and proscription, battered and broke every barricade that republican institutions had put in the way of military and executive power, until he finally had himself proclaimed dictator perpetuus, the King of Rome in everything but name. On March 15^th, 44 BCE, a group of republican conspirators, naming themselves the Liberatores, rose up and stabbed Caesar to death on the floor of the Senate. Meanwhile, Thursday, March 13^th, was also the 127^th anniversary (give or take the relevant calendar adjustments), of the death of Czar Alexander II Nikolaevitch, the self-styled Caesar of all the Russias. Alexander was killed by grenades thrown by a group of anarchist conspirators on March 13^th, 1881 C.E., in an act of propaganda by the deed. In honor of the events, the Ministry of Culture in this secessionist republic of one has proclaimed March 15^th Tyrannicide Day (observed), which is kind of like President’s Day, except cooler. Instead of another dull theo-nationalist hymn on the miraculous births of two of the canonized saints of the United States federal government, Tyrannicide Day gives us one day in which we can commemorate the deaths of two tyrants at the hands of their equals — men and women who defied the tyrants’ arbitrary claims to an unchecked authority that they had neither the wisdom, the virtue, nor the right to exercise. Men and women who saw themselves as exercising their equal right of self-defense, by striking down the would-be tyrants just like they would be entitled to strike down any other two-bit thug who tried to kill them, enslave them, or shake them down.

It is worth remembering in these days that the State has always tried to pass off attacks against its own commanding and military forces (Czars, Kings, soldiers in the field, etc.) as acts of terrorism. That is, in fact, what almost every so-called act of terrorism attributed to 19^th century anarchists happened to be: direct attacks on the commanders of the State’s repressive forces. The linguistic bait-and-switch is a way of trying to get moral sympathy on the cheap, in which the combat deaths of trained fighters and commanders are fraudulently passed off, by a professionalized armed faction sanctimoniously playing the victim, as if they were just so many innocent bystanders killed out of the blue. Tyrannicide Day is a day to expose this for the cynical lie that it is. As many reasons as there are to criticize the strategy behind the assassinations of Czars, Princes, and Dictators Perpetual, the fact that the brutal absolute monarch of a monster State lay dead at the end is not among them.

There are in fact lots of good reasons to rule out tyrannicide as a political tactic — after all, these two famous cases each ended a tyrant but not the tyrannical regime; Alexander II was replaced by the even more brutal Alexander III, and Julius Caesar was replaced by his former running-dogs, one of whom would emerge from the abattoir that followed as Augustus Caesar, to begin the long Imperial nightmare in earnest. But it’s important to recognize that these are strategic failures, not moral ones, and what should be celebrated on the Ides of March is not the tyrannicide as a strategy, but rather tyrannicide as a moral fact. Putting a diadem on your head and wrapping yourself in the blood-dyed robes of the State confers neither the virtue, the knowledge, nor the right to rule over anyone, anywhere, for even one second, any more than you had naked and alone. Tyranny is nothing more and nothing less than organized crime executed with a pompous sense of entitlement and a specious justification; the right to self-defense applies every bit as much against the person of some self-proclaimed sovereign as it does against any other two-bit punk who might attack you on the street.

Every victory for human liberation in history — whether against the crowned heads of Europe, the cannibal-empires of modern Fascism and Bolshevism, or the age-old self-perpetuating oligarchies of race and sex — has had these moral insights at its core: the moral right to deal with the princes and potentates of the world as nothing more and nothing less than fellow human beings, to address them as such, to challenge them as such, and — if necessary — to resist them as such.

I have been informed that March 15^th is also commemorated as the International Day Against Police Brutality. Make of that what you will; what the Ministry of Culture will make of it is an excellent opportunity for a program of commemorative song.

Our first piece is a skolion for the Athenian lovers Aristogeiton and Harmodius, who assassinated the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 BCE, using swords they had concealed in ceremonial myrtle wreaths. In the Athenian democracy, the couple were celebrated as martyrs for liberty, and often remembered in hymns and songs sung before banquets. This is Edgar Allan Poe’s 1827 translation of the most famous surviving Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius; feel free to sing it at your Tyrannicide Day holiday dinner:

Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal
Like those champions devoted and brave,
When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,
And to Athens deliverance gave.

Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam
In the joy breathing isles of the blest;
Where the mighty of old have their home
Where Achilles and Diomed rest

In fresh myrtle my blade I’ll entwine,
Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,
When he made at the tutelar shrine
A libation of Tyranny’s blood.

Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!
Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs!
Endless ages shall cherish your fame,
Embalmed in their echoing songs!

—Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius, trans. Edgar Allan Poe (1827)

Our second piece, in honor of the combined occasions for the day, is one of the most famous outlaw corridos from the south Texas borderlands, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, a cowboy and small-time farmer in Karnes County, Texas, who became a legal cause celebre, and a folk hero for many Tejan@s, after he fought back against a racist sheriff in June 1901. Sheriff W. T. Brack Morris was interrogating Cortez and his brother, and accused them of horse-thieving — based on nothing more than the fact that they did have a horse, and Cortez met the description of the suspect in a recent horse-theft — a suspect who had been described only as a middle-sized Mexican. Morris tried to arrest Cortez; Cortez told him off, and said that Morris had no reason to arrest him. The deputy who was translating mistakenly claimed that Cortez had said No white man can arrest me; that was enough for Morris, who pulled his gun and shot down Cortez’s brother. Cortez fired back, killing Morris, and then fled across the state on foot. He managed to elude capture for ten days, repeatedly making daring and close escapes when surrounded and outnumbered by sheriffs, posses, and the rinches (Texas Rangers). The cops threw his wife, his mother, and his children into jail. Anglo papers called for him to be lynched, and Anglo mobs rioted against Latin@s in Gonzales, Refugio, and Hayes counties. After Cortez was finally captured and put on trial for murder, his supporters organized legal defense campaigns, arguing that Cortez had killed only in to defend himself and his family; eventually they got all but one of the murder convictions reversed on appeal. In 1913, they convinced governor Oscar Colquitt to grant Cortez a conditional pardon. Meanwhile, his fame spread in the countryside through this ballad.

Gregorio Cortez Traditional (1900s–1920s). En el condado de El Carmen miren lo que ha sucedido, murió el Cherife Mayor quedando Román herido. Se anduvieron informando como media hora después supieron que el malhechor era Gregorio Cortez. Decía Gregorio Cortez Con su pistola en la mano: —No siento haberlo matado, lo que siento es a mi hermano.— Soltaron los perroes jaunes pa’ que siguieran la huella, pero alcanzar a Cortez era seguir a una estrella. Tiró con rumbo a Gonzales sin ninguna timidez: —Síganme, rinches cobardes, yo soy Gregorio Cortez.— Y en el condado del Kiansis lo llegaron a alcanzar y a pocos más de trescientos allí les brincó el corral. Decía Gregorio Cortez, con pistola en la mano: —¡Ay, cuánto rinche cobarde para un solo mexicano!— Cuando les brincó el corral, según lo que aquí se dice, se agarraron a balazos y les mató otro cherife. Decían Gregorio Cortez con su alma muy encendida: —No siento haberlo matado, la defensa es permitida. Salió Gregorio Cortez, salió con rumbo a Laredo, no lo quisieron seguir porque le tuvieron miedo. Decían Gregorio Cortez: ¿Pa’ qué se valen de planes? No me pueden agarrar ni con esos perros juanes. Decían los americanos: —Si lo alcanzamos ¿qué hacemos? Si le entramos por derecho muy poquitos volveremos.— Allá por El Encinal, Según lo que aquí se dice, le formaron un corral y les mató otro Cherife. Ya se encontró a una mexicana, le dice con altivez: —Platícame qué hay de nuevo, yo so Gregorio Cortez. —Dicen que por culpa mía han matado mucha gente, pues ya me voy a entregar porque eso no es conveniente.— Venían todos los rinches, por el viento volaban, porque se querían ganar diez mil pesos que les daban. Cuando rodearon la casa Cortez se les presentó: —Por la buena sí me llevan porque de otro modo no. Deciá el Cherife Mayor, como queriendo llorar: —Cortez, entrega tus armas, no te vamos a matar.— Decía Gregorio Cortez, gritaba en alta voz: —Mis armas no las entrego hasta estar en calaboz’.— Ya agarraron a Cortez, ya terminó la cuestión, la probre de su familia lo lleva en el corazón. Ya con ésta me despido a la sombra de un ciprés; aquí se acaba el corrido de don Gregorio Cortez.

Gregorio Cortez Trans. (2008) Charles Johnson. In the county of El Carmen, Look what’s gone down The Big Ol’ Sheriff is dead, Leaving Roman dying on the ground. They walked around asking questions and in half an hour or so they found out the man who did it was Gregorio Cortez. And so said Gregorio Cortez, with his pistol in his hand, I don’t feel sorry that I killed him; what I feel sorry about is my brother. They unleashed the hound dogs, to follow on his trail, but chasing after Cortez was like following a star. He tore off down toward Gonzales Not timid in the least; Come after me, cowardly rinches; I am Gregorio Cortez. And in the county of Kiansis, They showed up to try and grab him, A bit more than three hundred There, and he jumped out of their corral. And so said Gregorio Cortez, With his pistol in his hand: Man, look how many cowardly rinches For just one Mexican! But when he jumped the corral, What they say around here is, The bullets started flying, And he killed them another sheriff. And so said Gregorio Cortez, With his soul burning bright, I don’t feel sorry that I killed him. A man’s got a right to defend his life. Then Gregorio Cortez got away, got away down the way to Laredo; they wouldn’t have wanted to follow, Now he had them scared to. And so said Gregorio Cortez: What’s the good of your plots? You can’t get your hands on me, Not even with those hound dogs. And so said the Americanos: If we catch up to him, what can we do? If we go after him in a straight-up fight, There won’t be many coming back. Out there by El Encinal, What they say around here is, They got him in another corral And he killed them another sheriff. Then he met another Mexican, And he said with some arrogance, What’s the news? Tell me— I am Gregorio Cortez. They say that because of me, They’re killing lots of folks So now I’ll turn myself in, because that ain’t fit at all. Down came all the rinches, Flying through the wind, Because they wanted to get ahold of Ten thousand pesos like they were offered. When they surrounded his house Cortez showed himself to say: You’ll take me in by my own will, And not any other way. And so said the Big Ol’ Sheriff, like he was about to cry: Cortez, hand over your guns, and you won’t have to die. And so said Gregorio Cortez, With a great big yell, I’m not handing my guns over Until you’ve locked me in my cell. And so they took in Cortez, And that’s where it came to an end. His poor family Carry him in their hearts. And with that I’ll say my goodbye In the shade under a cypress; Here I’ll finish off the ballad Of Don Gregorio Cortez.

Thus always to tyrants. Beware the State. Celebrate the Ides of March!

Further reading:

• GT 2007-11-23: The present anarchy of our commerce features a Tyrannicide Day commemorative t-shirt from the Rad Geek People’s Clothing Collective storefront
• GT 2007-03-15: Tyrannicide Day 2007: The fourth annual celebration, with an oration and a commemorative reading from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, a dramatic retelling of the legendary Swiss tyrannicide which, if genuinely historical, was perhaps the most strategically successful tyrannicide in history.
• GT 2006-03-15: Tyrannicide Day ceremonies for 2006: the third annual celebration, with some thoughts on equality and a commemorative reading from The Tragedy [sic] of Julius Caesar.
• GT 2005-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the second annual celebration, and some thoughts on tyrannicide and terrorism
• GT 2004-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the first annual celebration. It’s like President’s Day, only cooler.
• Professor Wilkes: Tyrannicide Not Terrorism
• Leo Tolstoy (1900): Thou Shalt Not Kill

An Albany woman was stopped for no apparent reason, then, with no apparent probable cause, was subjected to a humiliating public search for drugs in which an officer inserted two fingers into her vagina. They also seized her cell phone, and made a random call to one of her contacts, again without a warrant or probable cause. They found no drugs.

The woman filed a complaint, but it was never forwarded to the city’s civilian review board, whose entire purpose is to investigate complaints against the police. The police chief explained that the police aren’t required to forward every complaint to the board, particularly if the complainant requests that it not be, as the chief says happened in this case. This apparently came as a surprise to the city councilman who actually wrote the review board legislation.

As for the woman not wanting her complaint forwarded to the review board, that’s apparently because an internal affairs officer “persuaded” her to let the complaint be handled internally.

A member of the Citizens’ Police Review Board, who spoke on condition of anonymity because only the chairman is authorized to make public statements, said some members of the board have privately suspected that the department may be hiding cases of police misconduct.

In other instances, the internal affairs reports are so poorly organized and investigated the board has had trouble reaching decisions and often sends them back for more investigation. The board is supposed to appoint a monitor for complaints involving civil rights violations or allegations of excessive force.

“Whether the letter of the law says that this should be the process, the intent and spirit of the law mandates that, especially in cases of civil rights violations, they be submitted to us for review,” the board member said. “If not this, what do we review? … The fact they would dissuade someone from reporting an incident and say they would do the investigation better completely defeats the purpose of why we were created.”

Shutter said she grew increasingly unnerved by her experience with internal affairs — which is known as the Office of Professional Standards — because male detectives twice requested she wear clothes from the night of the incident to re-enact the body search.

Tuffey declined to comment on a list of written questions submitted by the Times Union last week, including why internal affairs officials didn’t assign a female detective on Shutter’s case.

“I hold our officers to the highest standards and I expect a complete and thorough investigation, but at this time, since there is an ongoing internal investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment.”

Neither officer involved in the incident has been interviewed by internal affairs, according to departmental sources.

Shutter met once with internal affairs detectives. They refused to give her a copy of a signed statement she made recounting the incident, she said.

Civilian review boards are a great idea, so long as they’re given subpoena and investigative powers, their findings and disciplinary recommendations are followed, and they’re taken seriously by prosecutors and police officials. Too often, that’s not the case.

Incidentally, the two officers in Albany have yet to be disciplined–not even the obligatory “suspension with pay.” And now more people are coming forward with similar allegations.

So even as police departments across the country are setting up sex offender registries, drug offender registries, and posting the mugs and names of suspected johns online, they also took a great deal umbrage early this month when Gino Sesto set up a site called RateMyCop.com. The premise is simple: Sesto wrote to police departments across the country, and obtained a list of the names and badge numbers of their officers. He then posted the names online in a format broken down by state and city, and encouraged users to rate their experiences with individual officers. All of the information he posted was already open to the public. He didn’t post the identities of any undercover officers.

Police groups went nuts, making the dubious argument that the site somehow jeopardized the safety of individual officers. Sesto said he had even planned on adding a feature that would allow individual officers to write responses to complaints made against them. But police groups persisted.

Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association told Wired the site could give citizens the opportunity to "unfairly malign" individual officers, and said he’d be asking the legislature to pass a law making sites like RateMyCop.com illegal.

Last week, it all got weirder. Hosting service GoDaddy mysteriously terminated Sesto’s account, and pulled RateMyCop.com offline. GoDaddy has offered several explanations to Wired’s ThreatLevel blog, but thus far, none of them have made much sense. Sesto gave up on GoDaddy, and next tried to get the site hosted at RackSpace. They turned him down. After initial accepting his down payment for hosting services, a RackSpace lawyer sent a letter to Sesto stating that, "We believe that the website to be found at www.ratemycop.com as described to our sales representative could create a risk to the health and safety of law enforcement officers."

The good news is, the site’s back up, now, though it isn’t clear who’s hosting it.

Me, I think police departments should be required to post all citizen complaints against individual officers online in a searchable database. Individual officers, their union reps, or their departments could post responses or explanations to frivolous claims. Police officers are public servants. Not only that, they’re public servants with the power to arrest, detain, and use lethal force. If certain officers are the subject of repeated complaints and aren’t being properly investigated internally, the public ought to be informed of that. This culture of secrecy—and of intimidating anyone who dares question it—isn’t healthy.

• A failed war carried out under false pretenses, closing in on 4,000 dead U.S. troops, corrupt officials at the highest levels of his administration, incompetence, a complete lack of transparency and accountability–yes, it’s all quite funny, isn’t it? Har!
• So the woman was only on the toilet seat for a month. But yes, “Sheriff Whipple” has now recommended charges against her boyfriend. I wonder, what exactly was he supposed to do? At what point are you supposed to call the police when your girlfriend won’t get off the toilet? Apparently, a month is too long. Frankly, given the number of incidents of I’ve seen where a loved one called the police because of a stubborn psychologically disturbed loved one then escalated into all sorts of unnecessary ugliness and confrontation, I’d have been reluctant, too. I guess I just don’t get this knee-jerk need to throw out a charge every time something unfortunate happens. These people need help, not jail time.
• John Tierney looks at the science behind “A Boy Named Sue.” My biggest problem these days is getting people to believe that “Radley Prescott Balko” is actually my real name.
• Holding the sun.
• The two brothers who were accosted by police after videotaping a drug raid have won a $1.7 million settlement from Harris County, Texas.

…this week is on the Ryan Frederic/Jarrod Shivers mess in Chesapeake.

Rapist on patrol: Officer David Alex Park

(Story via smally.)

Last month, in Irvine, California, Officer David Alex Park, stalker and rapist, was acquitted by a jury of eleven men and one woman. He was acquitted, not because he is anything other than a stalker and a rapist—which he as much as admitted in open court, and which was proven well enough anyway by phone records, license plate requests, and DNA evidence. He was acquitted because he is a cop, and the woman that he harassed and sexually extorted danced at a strip club, and so the jury concluded that she made him do it, and besides, if she strips for a living, she must have been asking for it anyway.

You might think that I am exaggerating the defense’s position for polemical effect. No, I’m not. Here’s defense attorney Jim Stokke: She got what she wanted, … She’s an overtly sexual person. And in cross-examination of Lucy, the survivor: You do the dancing to get men to do what you what them to do, … And the same thing happened out there on that highway [in Laguna Beach]. You wanted [Park] to take some sex!

Back in the real world, outside of Jim Stokke’s and Officer David Alex Park’s pornographic power-trip succubus fantasies, what actually happened is that a professional cop, while armed and on patrol, used the extensive arbitrary powers that the law grants to police in order to get personal records on several different women at the strip club, picked out the one he liked the best, followed her, waited for the first excuse to use his legally-backed coercive power against her, used the power of his badge and gun to force her to pull over, used that same power to bring her under his custody and keep her there against her will, threatened her with arrest and jail, and then forced her into sex against her will. He didn’t give a damn about what she wanted because she’s just a woman, and an overtly sexual one at that. And he could force what he wanted on her because he’s a cop—so he has the power to restrain and threaten her—and she’s a stripper—so he had every reason to believe that a jury would give him every possible (and some impossible) benefit of the doubt, while they treated her bodily integrity and her consent as worth less than nothing, and blamed her for anything that happened to her, anyway. As, in fact, they did.

As I said about a case with several male cops in San Antonio back in December:

What as at stake here has a lot to do with the individual crimes of three cops, and it’s good to know that the police department is taking that very seriously. But while excoriating these three cops for their personal wickedness, this kind of approach also marginalizes and dismisses any attempt at a serious discussion of the institutional context that made these crimes possible — the fact that each of these three men worked out of the same office on the same shift, the way that policing is organized, the internal culture of their own office and of the police department as a whole, and the way that the so-called criminal justice system gives cops immense power over, and minimal accountability towards, the people that they are professedly trying to protect. It strains belief to claim that when a rape gang is being run out of one shift at a single police station, there’s not something deeply and systematically wrong with that station. If it weren’t for the routine power of well-armed cops in uniform, it would have been much harder for Victor Gonzales, Anthony Munoz, or Raymond Ramos to force their victims into their custody or to credibly threaten them in order to extort sex. If it weren’t for the regime of State violence that late-night patrol officers exercise, as part and parcel of their legal duties, against women in prostitution, it would have been that much harder for Gonzales and Munoz to imagine that they could use their patrol as an opportunity to stalk young women, or to then try to make their victim complicit in the rape by forcing her to pretend that the rape was in fact consensual sex for money. And if it weren’t for the way in which they can all too often rely on buddies in the precinct or elsewhere in the force to back them up, no matter how egregiously violent they may be, it would have been much harder for any of them to believe that they were entitled to, or could get away with, sexually torturing women while on patrol, while in full uniform, using their coercive power as cops.

A serious effort to respond to these crimes doesn’t just require individual blame or personal accountability — although it certainly does require that. It also requires a demand for fundamental institutional and legal reform. If police serve a valuable social function, then they can serve it without paramilitary forms of organization, without special legal privileges to order peaceful people around and force innocent people into custody, and without government entitlements to use all kinds of violence without any accountability to their victims. What we have now is not civil policing, but rather a bunch of heavily armed, violently macho, institutionally privileged gangsters in blue.

—GT 2007-12-21: Rapists on patrol

In Irvine, the same thing is happening all over again—just another Bad Apple causing Yet Another Isolated Incident. Except that in Irvine, the legal system has not even gone so far as to get to the part about individual blame and personal accountability. Overt misogyny against women who dare ever to be overtly sexual, combined with overt authoritarianism in favor of any controlling macho creep with a badge and a gun and a pocketful of wet dreams, have combined to get this admitted sexual predator completely off the hook, and leave all of his old buddies back at the department free to stalk, harass, extort and rape suspect women, with every expectation of more or less complete impunity for their actions.

Christ, but there are days when I hate being proven right about the things I write about.

Further reading:

• GT 2007-12-21: Rapists on patrol
• GT 2007-12-02: Men in uniform

A couple of weeks ago, I started sending off open records requests related to drug raids to various cities across the country. My initial goal was to review the warrants and return sheets for these raids, for several reasons.

First, I want to see how many times police mistakenly raid the wrong home. Second, I wanted to see just how often forced entry raids occur. Third, I wanted to see if the police are doing the proper amount of corroborating investigation before breaking into people’s homes or if they’re, as I suspect, using boilerplate language about drugs and/or weapons to get a no-knock or knock-and-announce warrant (which would technically be illegal). And finally, I wanted to see just how often police found what they claimed they were looking for in the warrants themselves.  How many of these raids actually found drugs or weapons?  How many found enough to result in something more than a misdemeanor charge?

I got my first reply back late last week, from the police department in Houston. Unfortunately, it looks as if any thorough review of search warrants, or of how many warrants hit the wrong address, is going to be cost prohibitive. My request from the Houston PD records office was for one or both of the following:

• A copy of the warrant, affidavits, and evidence return sheets for every forced-entry drug raid (no-knock or knock-and-announce) performed in the city since January 1, 2004.

• A copy of all complaints against he Houston police department regarding a narcotics warrant served on the wrong house since January 1, 2001.

Houston PD’s open records officer told me that the cost to comply with the first request would be around $45,000. The cost for the second would be $55,000. Which means a survey of the couple dozen cities I had hoped to eventually do would likely cost several million dollars.  So that won’t be happening.

Still, some interesting information did come out of the request.

First, the reason my request for the second item was so expensive is that HPD doesn’t have a code for a complaint that a warrant was served on wrong house. That in itself is pretty interesting (and should probably be remedied). So to comply with my request, they’d have to pull every complaint filed after a narcotics warrant was served, then read through the complaint to see if it was based on a "wrong door" raid.

What I did learn was that over the last seven years, there have been 43,456 complaints filed in Houston in response to the service of a warrant.  I’m guessing that includes all warrants, not just drug warrants.  Still, it’s a really high figure (17 per day?).  In fact, I thought perhaps they’d misunderstood, and run a search for all police complaints in that time.  But the records officer specifically said that those were the complaints related to warrant service.  Make of that what you will.  I’m sure a large percentage of them were frivolous.  It’s just too bad there’s no way of figuring out how many complaints are related to a wrong-door raid without shelling out $55,000.

Second, and more disturbing, I learned that HPD has served about 16,000 forced-entry narcotics warrants in the last four years. The number is an estimate because the warrants are packed up in boxes, and the compliance officer guessed by multiplying the average number of warrants per box by the number of boxes.  But it’s not likely off by too much either way.

Eastern Kentucky University’s Peter Kraska surveyed SWAT team deployments ranging from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. Kraska estimated that by the end of his survey, SWAT teams were being called out about 40,000 times per year in the U.S., a huge increase from about 3,000 times per year just twenty years prior. That breaks down to about 110 SWAT raids per day.

The data I just received from Houston suggests Kraska’s figure from about 2000 could be dwarfed yet again today. If the estimate I was given is correct, over the last four years, police have been conducting about 11 forced entry drug raids per day in the city of Houston alone.

A couple of caveats: Not all forced-entry drug warrants are served by SWAT teams, and not all SWAT deployments are for drug warrants (though a large percentage of them are) Sometimes narcotics cops kick down doors on their own. And sometimes SWAT teams are deployed for what I would consider legitimate reasons—barricades, hostage takings, bank robberies, etc.

Still, the number from Houston is pretty striking. Eleven times a day in that city alone, the police get permission from a judge to break into someone’s home to enforce a consensual drug crime.

Trigger warning. The following video of a local news story may be triggering for experiences of sexual assault.

Stark County Sheriff Timothy A. Swanson:

Will a local television channel try to defame the Stark County Sheriff’s Office over yet another story? Swanson said in a prepared statement Monday. Will the truth be told to the citizens or is there just a sensationalist aspect trying to be conveyed while creating another story?

… With the media, there has been a lot of misinformation, Swanson said. We follow all guidelines by the Bureau of Adult Detention to avoid such actions and we following them to the tee.

… Swanson contends that his deputies followed procedures when handling Steffey.

… Each individual knows how difficult it was getting into the profession and the difficulty meeting the requirements set forth day to day in their chosen careers, the release said. They constantly meet the required training, refresh themselves on changing laws, complete any and all mandated requirements placed on them by either the Federal, State or their own agency.

Swanson said there may have been 20 or 30 incidents like Steffey’s in the last 16 months, with people in jail who appear to be unstable.

In those situations, they are people who are not taking care of themselves and in those instances we have to take action, he said.

… (For those that watched) the video, (the deputies) acted in accordance to our policies and procedures, he said, and I’m sorry that they have to go through such (a hassle) with the media and be ridiculed for something that they did exactly the way that they are supposed to do it.

—Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson, quoted by Michael Freeze, for the Massillon, Ohio Independent (2008-03-07): Sheriff’s department denies wrongdoing in strip-search case

Further reading:

• GT 2008-03-07: Rapists in uniform #2: four more women come forward
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)
• GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform