Gangsters in Blue

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.

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.

[The following post was written by Charles "Rad Geek" Johnson with reference to an article I published last month titled "Burning down the house." It was originally published at Rad Geek People's Daily on January 28th. Rad Geek is a Las Vegas-based software developer and libertarian activist who frequently comments about police brutality and cop culture on his personal blog. He also maintains Gangsters In Blue which bills itself as "a blog against paramilitary policing and prisons" and aggregates police-related material from a number of websites including Cop Block.]

Here are the after-effects of some SWAT-police non-lethal force in California, which burned a man to death earlier this month, and set his family’s house on fire in the process. Turns out he was the wrong man, and they were at the wrong house.

1. ^[1]

   That is, torture.

   ↩

2. ^[2]

   !! Apparently a right-thinking, responsible citizen keeps their house on the assumption that at any moment police might be throwing incendiary grenades into their living room.

   ↩

In May of 2010, 18-year-old Jeremy Marks was charged with interfering with an officer, making criminal threats to an officer, and “attempted lynching” (i.e., attempt to start a riot). He was a bystander taking a cell phone video of Officer Erin Robles, a particularly aggressive officer, who bashed a 15-year-old boy’s head into a window because he was smoking a cigarette. Several other bystanders also recorded the encounter with their phones. The videos, including the one taken by Mr. Marks himself, do not indicate Mr. Marks even approached Officer Robles, much less made criminal threats, attempted riot, or otherwise interfered (see our original post here).

Nevertheless, Marks faced up to 18 years in state prison. His family could not afford the $155,000 bail, and he was in jail for months as a result, despite having hurt no one – until a generous engineer at Google, Neil Fraser, donated his own money to pay Marks’ bond. After the story of Jeremy Marks was exposed in LA Weekly, Fraser wrote to LA Weekly, “I am in a position to post bail for Jeremy so that he may spend Christmas with his family.”

Fraser explained,  “When I was growing up, I spent several years in Germany — a country still traumatized by the Holocaust. One of the things I learned was that bad things can only happen if good people do nothing. I consider myself to be a good person, so I had no choice but to act when I saw something like this happening.”

This touching story is enough to stir the hearts of even calloused, cynical people. But of course, just as one sees a glimmer of hope, the police are on the trails of the only silver lining in a cloud of lies, quick to smash the last iota of justice remaining in a sordid tale of corruption and tyranny.

Most recently, the police conducted a violent raid on Marks’ family. The raid involved about 30 Los Angeles Police Department officers with their guns drawn. The police searched and trashed the house. They looted the entire place, seizing all forms and means of communication including phones, cameras and computers. They also drew guns on a neighbor who was trying to get his children. Jeremy’s legal documents were also seized (more here).

Yet again, when it comes to police, the rules of civility, justice and even the law, do not apply. Attorney-client privilege means nothing. “Innocent until proven guilty” means nothing. The Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure is indeed illusory. There are few things more “unreasonable” than a search and seizure that involves looting, theft, guns drawn on innocent people, and destruction of one’s home.

A young man who had not so much as touched a hair on an officer’s head had already been in jail for months because he could not afford bail. If “innocent until proven guilty” was ever a cherished concept in the United States, it certainly is not evidenced by the manner in which the legal system now operates. Marks sat in jail until a generous benefactor could pay his way out – this is not innocent until proven guilty; it’s the precise opposite. And of course, when the poor boy finally, and miraculously receives respite from the onslaught of shameful abuses by the legal system, the police are instantly there to quash any hope that there might yet be justice.

Assuming the evidence most unfavorable to Jeremy Marks, his actions towards Erin Robles amount to mere disrespect at the very worst. Yet such disrespect resulted in months of jail, and looting and destruction of his family’s home. Disrespect for a hallowed officer of the law was met with violence, theft and force by an agency that laughably claims to serve and protect people. If it weren’t for the badges and uniforms, the police undoubtedly would be virtually indistinguishable from a violent street gang.

When police commit arson.

On September 16th of last year, the Weber Morgan Narcotics Strike Force conducted a nighttime “no knock” paramilitary-style drug raid on the home of Todd Blair, a suspected methamphetamine dealer living in Roy, Utah. Within seconds of the raid’s commencement, Blair was dead. He had been shot three times by Sgt. Troy Burnett. As with [...]

The 12 grandchildren of Eurie Stamps Sr. will begin 2011 by burying their beloved grandfather. On January 5th Mr Stamps was murdered by the Framingham, MA Swat Team during a botched drug raid. Mr. Stamps was not the target of the drug raid and he was not armed when he was killed. Framingham’s Police Chief, [...]

The SWAT Team Would Like to See Your Alcohol Permit. Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-12-13):

In August a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. There were more raids in September and October. According to the Orlando Sentinel, barbers and customers were held at gunpoint, some in handcuffs, while police turned the shops...

You may have been aware that government professional-licensing regulations are routinely used to burn out competition and protect the financial interests of politically-connected businessmen. What you may not have known is that, besides being used to uphold state capitalism, they are also now frequently used to uphold a police state, and allow hyperviolent SWAT raids against licensed businesses, without even the pretense of a warrant.

Do you feel secure in your person, house, papers and effects?

Balko notes that, "at least in the 4th Circuit," the Fourth Amendment doesn't prevent the government from sending a SWAT team to make sure your beer is labeled correctly." I of course could not care less whether or not these completely unrestrained hyperviolent stormtrooper raids, conducted at the pleasure of government police against innocent people's hang-outs and places of business, are or are not authorized by the Constitution. Either the Fourth Amendment allows them, or it can demonstrably do nothing to prevent them. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

The SWAT Team Would Like to See Your Alcohol Permit. Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-12-13):

In August a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. There were more raids in September and October. According to the Orlando Sentinel, barbers and customers were held at gunpoint, some in handcuffs, while police turned the shops...

You may have been aware that government professional-licensing regulations are routinely used to burn out competition and protect the financial interests of politically-connected businessmen. What you may not have known is that, besides being used to uphold state capitalism, they are also now frequently used to uphold a police state, and allow hyperviolent SWAT raids against licensed businesses, without even the pretense of a warrant.

Do you feel secure in your person, house, papers and effects?

Balko notes that, "at least in the 4th Circuit," the Fourth Amendment doesn't prevent the government from sending a SWAT team to make sure your beer is labeled correctly." I of course could not care less whether or not these completely unrestrained hyperviolent stormtrooper raids, conducted at the pleasure of government police against innocent people's hang-outs and places of business, are or are not authorized by the Constitution. Either the Fourth Amendment allows them, or it can demonstrably do nothing to prevent them. In either case, it is unfit to exist.