Gangsters in Blue

Members of the Durham, North Carolina SWAT team had just finished arresting the two criminal suspects they were looking for when they realized they had forgotten the most important part of a successful SWAT raid: killing the family dog. So the officers returned to the front porch where the dog was peacefully resting and shot it three times, killing it.

The two people the SWAT team arrested have not even been charged yet, so it’s quite possible they didn’t even arrest the right people.

You can find the Durham Police Department’s contact info here.

SWAT goons slaughter dog is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

Members of the Durham, North Carolina SWAT team had just finished arresting the two criminal suspects they were looking for when they realized they had forgotten the most important part of a successful SWAT raid: killing the family dog. So the officers returned to the front porch where the dog was peacefully resting and shot it three times, killing it.

The two people the SWAT team arrested have not even been charged yet, so it’s quite possible they didn’t even arrest the right people.

You can find the Durham Police Department’s contact info here.

SWAT goons slaughter dog is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

Recently, a whole lot of lead has been flying in the otherwise sleepy desert berg of Tucson, Arizona. A few days ago, a Pima County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team descended upon a former Marine’s house at 9 in the morning to serve a search warrant pursuant to a drug investigation. Within 7 seconds of their arrival, 72 shots were fired and the homeowner, Jose Guereña lay dying on his kitchen floor. Despite former Surgeon General and co-founder of the PCSO SWAT team Richard Carmona’s assurances the unit’s members included highly trained medics capable of first-rate battlefield medicine, and such “care is not [rendered] according to good guy or bad guy or suspect. Whoever needs the care, gets the care as quickly and safely as possible,” Guereña lay struggling for his life for well over an hour before medics were allowed in. Despite arriving within 2 minutes of his wife’s desperate 911 call, they were told to wait. And wait they did, until they were finally given a “code 900,” meaning the suspect was dead and their life-saving services were no longer needed. Guereña’s wife and child fled past him after the barrage of rifle fire was over and deputies rousted them from their hiding place in a bedroom closet. Vanessa Guereña begged officials to render aid to her husband the whole time, but to no avail.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office has not released any details about the warrant, what they were looking for or what they got, besides a cryptic notice that they “found information pertinent to the investigation.” What is clear is that there was no arrest warrant, nor were any drugs, illegal guns or cash found at the residence of Jose Guereña. So far, the details have been very slow to come out. At first, Sheriff’s Deputies insisted that Guereña had fired his AR-15 rifle at them, forcing them to open fire, but now they admit that they fired first, and he died holding that gun with the safety still on. According to Michael O’Connor, as quoted by the Arizona Daily Star, “a deputy’s bullet struck the side of the doorway, causing chips of wood to fall on his shield, that prompted some members of the team to think the deputy had been shot.”

Some may be inclined to ask, “who cares if some drug dealer got killed pointing his rifle at the cops?” However, there is no evidence Mr. Guereña was a drug dealer, nor is it clear he had any idea that the armed men barging into his home were cops. That same spokes-bureaucrat, Mr. O’Connor insisted, “Tucson is notorious for home invasions and we didn’t want it to look like that,” ignoring the obvious fact that, aside from official government sanction and some chincy costume jewelry, that’s exactly what it was. Deputies say they clearly identified themselves, but witnesses, including Vanessa Guereña disagree. Jose had returned from the night shift at the Asarco mine only a few hours before the raid. His wife woke him up when she heard noises outside her window and saw a man with a gun. Jose told her to hide in the closet with their son, and he grabbed a rifle and went to the door to investigate.

Surely, his Marine training, honed by two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan came into play, because he crouched in a ready position and awaited the invaders. Days later, the PCSO would say that he told them he had “something for them,” as they kicked his door in, as if such a statement incriminated him. Normally, everyone would agree that a man has every right to defend his home and family against armed aggression, even if he spouts pithy catchphrases in the face of certain death, but when members of the state’s high caste of official violence are involved, the slightest hint of resistance is deemed a criminal act, even if the victim has no idea why or by whom he’s being attacked.

Jose was just 26 years old, and he leaves an even younger widow. His 4-year-old son saw his father dying in his own home. If the PCSO has any damning evidence suggesting he was a real criminal, they’re certainly being tight lipped about it, but neither Jose nor Vanessa has any criminal record of any kind. Given the gravity of the situation, if Guereña was a real threat to society, I think it would have come out by now.

The bottom line is, SWAT teams were created for handling dangerous hostage situations, not serving routine search warrants. Even if Guereña was guilty of some kind of drug crime, summary execution is obviously not an appropriate punishment. Reasonable people must ask, in what universe is it appropriate to fire 72 rounds into a residence in order to subdue ONE MAN? Obviously, this highly militarized SWAT team was just itching for action, and furthermore, their dubious training of emptying magazines at the slightest provocation led to this terrible outcome. They were not reacting to a genuine hostile fire situation, but rather to the negligent discharge of one of their own men, a guy apparently amped up on adrenaline and woefully unaware of the basic “no booger hook on the bang switch” gun safety rule.

This brings me to the next case of negligent firearm discharge by police here in the Old Pueblo. Back in March, Tucson police confronted a man suspected of a carjacking and an armed convenience store robbery at the apartment complex where they had tracked him down. After a police officer took his accomplice, Roger Wells, into custody, the driver of the car, Nicholas Johnson, threw his vehicle into reverse in an effort to escape, and in the process, caught the officer up in the rear driver-side door, which was ajar. After the officer was dragged a few feet, he was able to roll free, and Johnson put the car in drive and tried to get away, but the cop was still in front of the car. This prompted all 7 of the police officers present, including the officer on the ground, to open fire on the car, despite there being an innocent female passenger inside. A total of 53 round were fired, but only 7 hit the suspect (including one shotgun blast), and a bullet grazed an innocent female passenger in the car. Fortunately, no one else was hurt, but Nicholas was killed on the spot, though not before being chewed on by a police dog for good measure. No one in the car ever fired a shot, or was found to be in possession of a firearm.

This “magazine dumping” policy of what amounts to summary execution (Guereña was hit over 60 times, the PCSO SWAT team being apparently better marksmen than their TPD colleagues) demonstrates a depraved indifference to human life and the property of others. Police officers have every right to defend themselves against aggression from real criminal suspects high on drugs, but trigger happy adrenaline junkies who shoot first, and keep on shooting until there’s nothing left in the magazine (then reload and do it again), are a danger to everyone, even each other. Even more so, now that the Supreme Court has ruled that police have every right to kick in your door, without obtaining a search warrant, if they “hear noises” they believe to be the result of the destruction of evidence. Worse yet, at least for the residents of Indiana, their Supreme Court’s two most recent decisions have essentially repudiated the Magna Carta and the 4th Amendment, officially codifying what we have long known to be true here at Cop Block – there exists no legal right to resist violent assault by the state’s armed enforcers, even when they are obviously in violation of the law (which is now technically not possible, since whatever they do is now presumed to be legitimate; they finally ARE the law). You must always submit, citizen. These godawful rulings were predicated on the assumption that modern courts provide defendants with a wide range of options for legal redress, and are the appropriate venue for adjudicating any dispute over the validity of an arrest, search or other police action. Yeah, right. Tell that to Jose Guereña. Oh, wait…

UPDATE: Fellow Southern Arizonan Ghost32 asks some very important questions about this shooting. (HT: Reason’s Hit & Run blog)

2 Tucson Police Shootings: Cops fire 120+ Rounds, Suspects fire 0 is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

This video discusses Taser International’s latest weapon, the Taser Extended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP). Like traditional Taser devices, the XREP is an electroshock weapon, however, it is fired from a shotgun as though it were ammunition and can hit targets up to 100 feet away.

You can read more about XREP rounds from the manufacturer here, but they’re currently only being marketed to law enforcement.

New Taser weapon causes “most excruciating pain imaginable” is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

Over 50 officers, including officers of the South Suburban Emergency Response Team (SSERT), complete with camouflage, armored vehicle, and assault rifles, were involved in a “standoff” with a reportedly suicidal man who turned out not to even be home.  The mayor and many residents of Oak Forest Illinois are outraged over the fact that thousands of dollars of taxpayer’s money was wasted on the “standoff.” Unfortunately their outrage is not directed at the police’s complete over reaction, but instead at the man who committed no crime, but still had his home vandalized by the people supposedly sent to “help” him.

The incident began when a concerned friend of Mark Fitch called the police to report that he was suicidal and armed.   Oak Forest Chief of Police, Greg Anderson, said “The initial information we’re going off of is a friend who is very concerned about him where he had made suicide allegations that if police came, they would find him dead.” In response to this information more than 50 officers surrounded Fitch’s home and evacuated many of the surrounding homes. The police then attempted to contact Fitch on his home phone, but could not reach him.  This was the first indication that he was not home. Eventually, the police contacted Fitch on his cell phone.  The police say that he never indicated that he was not in the house, but they have not said whether or not they even asked.

Mark Fitch

It turns out that Fitch was sitting at a local bar watching the whole thing unfold on the news.  Who can blame him for not telling the police, “hey, I am down at Beggar’s Bar” when he can see on T.V. that several heavily armed men and their itchy trigger fingers have come to do what at most should have been a “wellness check”.

After 5 hours of waiting for Fitch to come out, SSERT decided to enter the home.  They fired pepper spray through the windows and then broke into the home only to find it empty.  Employees at Beggar’s Bar called the police and told them that the guy they were looking for was sitting at their bar.  Police apprehended Fitch there and took him to Palos Community Hospital for a mental evaluation.

Initial reports had varying degrees of misinformation, including that the standoff was the result of a hostage situation, but there is no evidence that the police had any reason to believe that Fitch had a hostage. There were also reports that the standoff began when a neighbor called to report that Fitch was in his yard with gun, but again this appears to be false and most likely stemmed from neighbors talking about seeing police with rifles in their yards.

When it became apparent that Fitch was not in the house the media began to call the whole thing a “hoax,” pinning the blame for the botched operation on Fitch, but even Chief Anderson explained that “He didn’t actually dupe us. He just was not in the house at the time when we thought he was based on the information – the best information we had at the time.”  What Chief Anderson hasn’t explained is why it was necessary to follow up on a report of a possibly suicidal man with a SWAT style team of heavily armed officers.

Despite the fact that even the Chief of Police has stated that Fitch did not commit a crime, the mayor and many residents want him to pony up for the cost of the standoff.  Estimates for the whole thing have been anywhere from $10,000-$75,000, mostly because of overtime pay for police officers.  Courts have rule over and over that the police have no obligation to protect someone, but bureaucrats like Mayor Hank Kuspa seem to think that when they do decide to respond to a call for help, even in the most ridiculous, over the top fashion, the person they were sent to help somehow has a obligation to pay for the cost of that response simply because he was not where the police believed him to be.

I suspect that their outrage is less about taxpayer’s money and more about the fact that the police looked foolish, not because of anything Fitch did, but because of their own over zealous use of their fancy toys.  If the outrage was really about money then the mayor and residents should direct the outrage at the police themselves and be demanding to know why SSERT was deployed in the first place and why it was necessary to have at least 50 officers respond to a suicide check.  If the outrage was really about money, then the mayor and residents should demand to know why so much money is spent on enforcing victimless crime laws, such as drug possession, when clearance rates for violent crimes and property crimes are incredibly low considering the amount we are forced to pay for the police’s “protection.”

Luckily, the police were unable to conjure up any crime that they could charge Fitch for, but he has still been victimized.  His home endured quite a bit of damage when SSERT decided to break in uninvited.  Do you think the police will pay for the damage?

The Standoff that Wasn’t Really a Standoff is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

Over the past few decades, police in the United States have become increasingly militarized. It’s becoming more and more common to see police carrying military-grade weapons and wearing combat armor. Police departments across the county — even those in small towns — are forming paramilitary police units, typically known as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) or SRT (Special Response Team). According to a recent USA Today interview with Peter Kraska, a criminologist whose work focuses on police militarization, SWAT teams were deployed only about 2,000 to 3,000 times per year in the early to mid 80′s. That number has shot up to about 70,000 and 80,000 per year in the present. The main reason for this dramatic increase is the use of SWAT teams for serving routine search or arrest warrants especially for drug suspects. SWAT teams have even been used to investigate suspected underage drinking and unlicensed barber shops.

One of the most frightening aspects of police militarization is the use of so-called “no-knock” searches by SWAT teams. The purpose of a no-knock search is to surprise the occupants of a building and subdue them with an overwhelming show of force before they have an opportunity to react. Police converge on a building — usually in the middle of the night — then smash the door in with a battering ram or explosives. They either announce their presence only a few seconds before breaking the door down or do not announce it at all (hence the “no-knock” title). After breaking in the door, police will sometimes throw deadly explosive devices called flashbang grenades into the home with the ostensible purpose of confusing and disorienting the occupants. They then storm the building and force everyone to the ground at gunpoint, handcuff them, and search the premises.

When police seek to obtain a no-knock warrant, they typically try to justify it in one or two ways. They either argue that they need the element of surprise in order to (1) stop a violence-prone subject before he or she has a chance to violently resist or (2) to stop a subject before he or she has a chance to destroy important evidence (i.e., flushing drugs down the toilet). It’s extremely common for judges to sign off on no-knock warrants for simply because police claim that a confidential informant — who may not even exist, for all the judge knows — claimed that someone was selling drugs. (See Radley Balko’s book Overkill for more on the legal issues surrounding no-knock raids.)

One of the biggest problems with no-knock searches is that people targeted by them often do not realize they are being raided by the police and use firearms or other weapons to defend themselves against the police. This point was made succinctly by Radley Balko in his book Overkill:

[P]olice typically serve these warrants just before dawn, or in the hours just before sunrise. They enter the residence unannounced or with very little notice. The subjects of these raids, then, are woken from deep sleep, and their waking thoughts are confronted with the prospect that their homes are being invaded. Their first reaction is almost certainly alarm, fear, and a feeling of peril. Disorienting devices like flashbang grenades only compound the confusion.

It isn’t difficult to see why a gun owner’s first instinct upon waking to a raid would be to disregard whatever the intruders may be screaming at him and reach for a weapon to defend himself. This is particularly true of someone with a history of violence or engaged in a criminal enterprise like drug dealing. But it’s also true of a law-abiding homeowner who legally owns guns for the purpose of defending his home and family.

– Radley Balko, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police in America (2006), Cato Institute, p. 32

You can see numerous cases on the Cato Institute’s interactive “Botched Paramilitary Police Raids” map where homeowners have killed police who they thought were robbers and other cases where police have killed confused homeowners.

Just recently, we were able to see video of a no-knock drug raid during which police shot and killed a confused homeowner. The police gathered at the front door of Todd Blair, a suspected meth dealer, in the middle of the night, shouted “Police! Search warrant!” a few times then, approximately two seconds after the first announcement, smashed the door in. The first officer to enter the home, Sgt. Troy Burnett, spotted Blair standing on the opposite side of the room holding a golf club and immediately opened fire on him without warning. He hit Blair three times, killing him instantly.

Despite numerous cases of police being shot by confused homeowners or confused homeowners being shot by police during no-knock raids, many SWAT supporters are in complete denial about the phenomenon. For instance, Alicia Hilton and Robert O’Brien of POLICE magazine argue that the shooting of Todd Blair was “objectively reasonable” on the grounds that Blair just had to have known the strangers breaking into his home in the middle of the night were police officers.

Examining the totality of the facts and circumstances in the Blair case, it was objectively reasonable for Sgt. Troy Burnett to shoot and kill Blair. Officers who participated in the search were wearing uniforms labeled police. They announced their presence by yelling, “Police search warrant” twice before they entered the home.

Instead of surrendering to the men he must have realized were officers, Blair lurked in a hallway, brandishing a golf club. The officers passed through the living room and were about to enter the hallway when Sgt. Burnett, the lead officer, saw Blair. An officer in Burnett’s position reasonably could have concluded that Blair posed an immediate threat because Blair was close enough to strike Burnett with the club.

Furthermore, Blair was an alleged meth user and allegedly had been involved in domestic violence. Experienced officers understand that people under the influence of drugs are more likely to commit an assault. The level of force used by Burnett was objectively reasonable.

– Alicia Hilton and Robert O’Brien, “No-Knock Searches: Reasonable or Deadly?” (Mar. 7th, 2011), POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine

The pieces of evidence Hilton and O’Brien use to “prove” that Blair knew he was being raided by the police are, on their face, completely and utterly ridiculous. The police were wearing uniforms labeled “POLICE,” but so what? Blair was shot immediately after the police entered his home, so he never even had a chance to read their uniforms. Was Blair supposed to have used his x–ray vision to read the uniforms while the police were on the opposite side of his front door? The police announced their presence before entering as Hilton and O’Brien say, but only two seconds before they smashed Blair’s door in. How do Hilton and O’Brien even know that Blair was able to hear the officers? How do they know he was able to decipher what they were yelling at him? Even if he had heard the police and understood what they were yelling, how was he supposed to know they were actually police officers? It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time someone posed as a police officer in order to get away with a crime.

But the problem with Hilton and O’Brien’s argument runs deeper than their poor supporting evidence. Their argument is faulty on a more fundamental level and for a reason that I think is really worth emphasizing because it goes to show just how far out of touch with reality the supporters of police militarization are. On the one hand, they want us to believe that these raids are necessary because they allow officers to surprise and confuse criminal suspects and leave them with the least possible amount of time to react. On the other hand, whenever someone is surprised or confused by one of these raids and ends up getting shot for picking up a weapon or making a “furtive movement,” they want us to believe that the shooting victim had to have known that the invaders were police and should have peacefully submitted to them with a rehearsed perfection. They can’t have it both ways.

Either no-knock raids are not planned with the goal of surprising and confusing people in mind, in which case it’s not clear what the point of them is, or they are conducted for the purpose of surprising and confusing people, in which case one cannot rationally fault someone for being surprised or confused by one. If no-knock SWAT raids are conducted to surprise and confuse residents — and, as has already been established, they are — then I think it’s “objectively reasonable” to conclude that shooting a homeowner for being surprised and confused during a no-knock raid is an act of cold-blooded murder.

For more about the Todd Blair shooting, check out this older post I wrote about it.

If you appreciate my work, please consider sending a donation via PayPal.

Join the forum discussion on this post

The cognitive dissonance of SWAT supporters is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

Over the past few decades, police in the United States have become increasingly militarized. It’s becoming more and more common to see police carrying military-grade weapons and wearing combat armor. Police departments across the county — even those in small towns — are forming paramilitary police units, typically known as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) or SRT (Special Response Team). According to a recent USA Today interview with Peter Kraska, a criminologist whose work focuses on police militarization, SWAT teams were deployed only about 2,000 to 3,000 times per year in the early to mid 80′s. That number has shot up to about 70,000 and 80,000 per year in the present. The main reason for this dramatic increase is the use of SWAT teams for serving routine search or arrest warrants especially for drug suspects. SWAT teams have even been used to investigate suspected underage drinking and unlicensed barber shops.

One of the most frightening aspects of police militarization is the use of so-called “no-knock” searches by SWAT teams. The purpose of a no-knock search is to surprise the occupants of a building and subdue them with an overwhelming show of force before they have an opportunity to react. Police converge on a building — usually in the middle of the night — then smash the door in with a battering ram or explosives. They either announce their presence only a few seconds before breaking the door down or do not announce it at all (hence the “no-knock” title). After breaking in the door, police will sometimes throw deadly explosive devices called flashbang grenades into the home with the ostensible purpose of confusing and disorienting the occupants. They then storm the building and force everyone to the ground at gunpoint, handcuff them, and search the premises.

When police seek to obtain a no-knock warrant, they typically try to justify it in one or two ways. They either argue that they need the element of surprise in order to (1) stop a violence-prone subject before he or she has a chance to violently resist or (2) to stop a subject before he or she has a chance to destroy important evidence (i.e., flushing drugs down the toilet). It’s extremely common for judges to sign off on no-knock warrants for simply because police claim that a confidential informant — who may not even exist, for all the judge knows — claimed that someone was selling drugs. (See Radley Balko’s book Overkill for more on the legal issues surrounding no-knock raids.)

One of the biggest problems with no-knock searches is that people targeted by them often do not realize they are being raided by the police and use firearms or other weapons to defend themselves against the police. This point was made succinctly by Radley Balko in his book Overkill:

[P]olice typically serve these warrants just before dawn, or in the hours just before sunrise. They enter the residence unannounced or with very little notice. The subjects of these raids, then, are woken from deep sleep, and their waking thoughts are confronted with the prospect that their homes are being invaded. Their first reaction is almost certainly alarm, fear, and a feeling of peril. Disorienting devices like flashbang grenades only compound the confusion.

It isn’t difficult to see why a gun owner’s first instinct upon waking to a raid would be to disregard whatever the intruders may be screaming at him and reach for a weapon to defend himself. This is particularly true of someone with a history of violence or engaged in a criminal enterprise like drug dealing. But it’s also true of a law-abiding homeowner who legally owns guns for the purpose of defending his home and family.

– Radley Balko, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police in America (2006), Cato Institute, p. 32

You can see numerous cases on the Cato Institute’s interactive “Botched Paramilitary Police Raids” map where homeowners have killed police who they thought were robbers and other cases where police have killed confused homeowners.

Just recently, we were able to see video of a no-knock drug raid during which police shot and killed a confused homeowner. The police gathered at the front door of Todd Blair, a suspected meth dealer, in the middle of the night, shouted “Police! Search warrant!” a few times then, approximately two seconds after the first announcement, smashed the door in. The first officer to enter the home, Sgt. Troy Burnett, spotted Blair standing on the opposite side of the room holding a golf club and immediately opened fire on him without warning. He hit Blair three times, killing him instantly.

Despite numerous cases of police being shot by confused homeowners or confused homeowners being shot by police during no-knock raids, many SWAT supporters are in complete denial about the phenomenon. For instance, Alicia Hilton and Robert O’Brien of POLICE magazine argue that the shooting of Todd Blair was “objectively reasonable” on the grounds that Blair just had to have known the strangers breaking into his home in the middle of the night were police officers.

Examining the totality of the facts and circumstances in the Blair case, it was objectively reasonable for Sgt. Troy Burnett to shoot and kill Blair. Officers who participated in the search were wearing uniforms labeled police. They announced their presence by yelling, “Police search warrant” twice before they entered the home.

Instead of surrendering to the men he must have realized were officers, Blair lurked in a hallway, brandishing a golf club. The officers passed through the living room and were about to enter the hallway when Sgt. Burnett, the lead officer, saw Blair. An officer in Burnett’s position reasonably could have concluded that Blair posed an immediate threat because Blair was close enough to strike Burnett with the club.

Furthermore, Blair was an alleged meth user and allegedly had been involved in domestic violence. Experienced officers understand that people under the influence of drugs are more likely to commit an assault. The level of force used by Burnett was objectively reasonable.

– Alicia Hilton and Robert O’Brien, “No-Knock Searches: Reasonable or Deadly?” (Mar. 7th, 2011), POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine

The pieces of evidence Hilton and O’Brien use to “prove” that Blair knew he was being raided by the police are, on their face, completely and utterly ridiculous. The police were wearing uniforms labeled “POLICE,” but so what? Blair was shot immediately after the police entered his home, so he never even had a chance to read their uniforms. Was Blair supposed to have used his x–ray vision to read the uniforms while the police were on the opposite side of his front door? The police announced their presence before entering as Hilton and O’Brien say, but only two seconds before they smashed Blair’s door in. How do Hilton and O’Brien even know that Blair was able to hear the officers? How do they know he was able to decipher what they were yelling at him? Even if he had heard the police and understood what they were yelling, how was he supposed to know they were actually police officers? It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time someone posed as a police officer in order to get away with a crime.

But the problem with Hilton and O’Brien’s argument runs deeper than their poor supporting evidence. Their argument is faulty on a more fundamental level and for a reason that I think is really worth emphasizing because it goes to show just how far out of touch with reality the supporters of police militarization are. On the one hand, they want us to believe that these raids are necessary because they allow officers to surprise and confuse criminal suspects and leave them with the least possible amount of time to react. On the other hand, whenever someone is surprised or confused by one of these raids and ends up getting shot for picking up a weapon or making a “furtive movement,” they want us to believe that the shooting victim had to have known that the invaders were police and should have peacefully submitted to them with a rehearsed perfection. They can’t have it both ways.

Either no-knock raids are not planned with the goal of surprising and confusing people in mind, in which case it’s not clear what the point of them is, or they are conducted for the purpose of surprising and confusing people, in which case one cannot rationally fault someone for being surprised or confused by one. If no-knock SWAT raids are conducted to surprise and confuse residents — and, as has already been established, they are — then I think it’s “objectively reasonable” to conclude that shooting a homeowner for being surprised and confused during a no-knock raid is an act of cold-blooded murder.

For more about the Todd Blair shooting, check out this older post I wrote about it.

If you appreciate my work, please consider sending a donation via PayPal.

Join the forum discussion on this post

The cognitive dissonance of SWAT supporters is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

MSNBC asked in a recent article “Why do America’s Police Need an Armored Tank?” The answer to that question is they don’t, but when someone else is footing the bill, why not.

The fact is that most fatal shootings of police officers occur while responding to calls, such as burglary or domestic violence calls and during traffic stops.  Unless the police plan on responding to calls for help by driving their minitanks through the front door, an armored vehicle will do nothing to prevent these deaths.  But, this fact has not stopped police departments across the country from purchasing armored vehicles.

The Lenco Bearcat is often the armored vehicle of choice for police departments.  They cost almost a quarter of a million dollars.  The sheriff in Garfield County, Colorado, Lou Vallejo, justified his recent purchase of a Lenco Bearcat by stating that “there is NO price tag you can put on the life of a police officer who is out there protecting you.”  Well that is easy for you to say Sheriff Vallejo, since it is not your money being spent on this fancy toy.  If you really believe that there is no price tag you can put on the life of a police officer then why don’t you pony up from your own personal funds?

Between 2000 and 2009, 29 police officers were killed during a “tactical situation” such as a barricaded suspect, hostage situation, or high risk entry.  It is possible that some of these officer’s deaths may have been prevented by an armored vehicle, but it is just as likely that not performing a “high risk entry” in the first place would save more lives, and not just officers lives, but the lives of innocent bystanders.  If Sheriff Vellejo was really interested in protecting lives he would spend less time defending his 250,000 dollar chunk of metal and more time insisting that his colleagues refrain from introducing violence into an otherwise non-violent situation. But, when other people are carrying the cost, bureaucrats such as Sheriff Vellejo have little to no incentive to use resources or personal in the most cost effective manner.  Violence is expensive but who cares when someone else not only pays for it, but has no choice but to pay for it.

Of course, cost is not the only concern people should have regarding armored police vehicles.  In 2010 there were 700 SWAT team “high risk entries” that involved serving a search warrant for drugs in just one state.  As the police become more militarized we inevitability see more and more inappropriate use of SWAT raids.  Emboldened with a new armored toy, the police will surely want to find reasons to take it out of the garage.  We can expect more violence, not less.

The sheriff of yesterday.

The Sheriff of today.

In just the last couple decades we have gone from Sheriff Andy to heavily armed police officers in full tactical gear.  Now with a Lenco Bearcat rolling down the street, the police will look no different than if an army was rolling through town.  Do you feel safer?

Do Your Local Police Need an Armored Vehicle? is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

MSNBC asked in a recent article “Why do America’s Police Need an Armored Tank?” The answer to that question is they don’t, but when someone else is footing the bill, why not.

The fact is that most fatal shootings of police officers occur while responding to calls, such as burglary or domestic violence calls and during traffic stops.

Do Your Local Police Need an Armored Vehicle? is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

When police raid innocent homeowners, the police often claim that such raids are “isolated incidents.” Sure, it’s horrible when men-in-black kick down an innocent person’s door in the middle of the night, toss deadly flashbang grenades inside, scream at the occupants, throw them to the ground at gunpoint, and ransack their home, but we shouldn’t get to worked up about this sort of thing because it’s just so damn rare, right?

Reading the story of Walter and Rose Martin should give you doubts. The Martins, an elderly, law-abiding couple living in Brooklyn, were visited by the New York City Police Department at least 50 times over the course of 8 years. The Martins were never the victims of a full-blown no-knock raid, but their story shows how much effort police put into ensuring the integrity of their search warrants.

Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin’s Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002.

What followed was years of cops appearing at the Martins’ door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists – as often as three times a week.

After the Daily News exclusively reported on the couple’s plague of police raids [on March 18th, 2010], apologetic detectives from the NYPD’s Identity Theft Squad showed up at their home.

Rose Martin, 82, said they told her Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered them to solve the puzzle – stat.

By the end of the day, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said the snafu was traced to a 2002 computer test, though he couldn’t explain why the couple’s address was used as a test case in the first place.

He said that when the Martins complained to cops in 2007 about their scary series of official doorknocks, police tried to wipe their address from the system.

But the raids continued. The most recent, on Tuesday, left 83-year-old World War II vet Walter Martin woozy from soaring blood pressure.

Investigators found [on March 18th, 2010] that not every computer file bearing the Martin’s address was deleted.

“It wasn’t supposed to stay in [the system],” Browne said. “It’s been removed.”

In order to be “doubly cautious” in the future, Browne said cops have flagged the Martin’s address so no officer will be dispatched to the home without double-checking the address.

A skeptical Rose Martin asked the department to write her an official letter, dubious that such a long-standing problem could be fixed in a day.

“It seems like too simple a correction for something that has been going on for eight years,” she said.

– Kate Nocera and John Lauinger, “Computer snafu is behind at least 50 ‘raids’ on Brooklyn couple’s home” (March 19th, 2010), Daily News

The story gets weirder. Apparently the police visits to the Martins’ residence started before the Martins even moved into the house. In fact, the reason the previous owner sold the house to the Martins in 1997 is that he was wrongly visited about 30 times between 1994 and 1997 despite filing numerous complaints and was so freaked out that he decided to leave town.

Of course, none of the police who participated in this lengthy campaign of harassment will ever spend a second behind bars or have to pay even a cent of damages to the people they terrorized. Perhaps that’s why they felt comfortable ignoring all the complaints filed against them and using their lame “computer glitch” excuse — which doesn’t even begin to make sense — to explain away their own thuggishness and incompetence.