The Rise of the Warrior Cop

[TheTman]

This article talks about the militarization of the police, and how it's lead to deaths of innocent people, as well as deaths of people for some pretty minor offenses.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...780519904.html

[downtownv]

The police used to know the residents, now they seem forced into this fortress type compound, (that used to be the police dept. building) Everyone is suspect and there is a total, us against them, mentality. The more police recoil in this manner the more natural that they will act more tactical/military like. I sure miss Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney Fife!

[RevRay]

This whole subject is more scary to me than terrorists. I remember how shocked I was to see an APC rolling down a street in Watertown, MA a few months ago. As a former infantryman, I instantly thought it was way over the top. The Principle of War of Mass says you bring to a fight only what is needed to accomplish a mission. Why would you ever need an APC to find one single person?

[Glock23]

Re: The Rise of the Warrior Cop

Why would you ever need an APC to find one single person?

If a suspect is armed with guns, you come with body armor and shields.

If a suspect is armed with bombs, you come with an APC.

I do believe the whole martial law / neighborhood lockdown was a bit extreme, though.

[TheTman]

What gets me, is a cop can barge into the wrong house in the middle of the night, and if the homeowner shoots and kills him, the homeowner is arrested and most likely given the death penalty, when the cops shouldn't even have been there.
If you know you aren't breaking the law, and armed men come ransacking your house in the middle of the night, you're going to think it's a home invasion, and possibly shoot someone. No matter if they are yelling "police", or "Sheriff", or whatever they are yelling. You don't know who it is yet, all you see is people wandering around pointing guns and yelling. How much you want to bet that some home invaders come in yelling about the same things.
But none of that is taken into account, you are a cop killer and get what punishment they give you.
Now the cops can burst into any house they want, without knocking, hell, without even verifying they are at the right house, spray bullets indiscriminately, kill people, and pets, and all they have to do is say they were doing their job, or were afraid for the life, and they get a paid leave for a couple weeks, then right back on duty. Cops need to be like everyone else and face up to it if they screw up, and let a jury decide if they acted appropriately or not. Not some internal affairs unit that's just going to rubber stamp it, and get them back out on the streets ASAP.
If they'd cut out this no-knock crap, and just bursting into homes, a lot of these mistakes wouldn't happen, but we've got the cops thinking they're soldiers, and acting like it, instead of serving and protecting. IN SOME CASES. Fortunately, these occurrences are rare, but are becoming more frequent. Something needs to be done, to hold people accountable for their actions, before it gets worse. I realize it's a tough job, but they could at least check they are at the right house before barging in. Then you have things like where they did knock and wait for the homeowner to answer the door, but he had a gun in his hand, as a person might if someone is pounding on their door at 2 in the morning, and one of the cops just draws his weapon and kills the homeowner, no "drop the weapon" or any other warning, just BANG. That cop walked, got a few weeks paid vacation. Wow, kill a innocent man, and get a paid vacation.

Examples

• Kathryn Johnston (c1914-2006) was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia woman shot by three undercover police officers in her home on November 21, 2006 after she fired one shot at the ceiling, assuming her home was being invaded. While the officers were wounded by friendly fire, none of the officers received life threatening injuries, but Johnston was killed by their gunfire.[1]
• Two former Los Angeles Police Department officers, along with 13 others, have plead guilty to running a robbery ring, which used fake no-knock raids as a ruse to catch victims off guard. The defendants would then steal cash and drugs to sell on the street. This tactic led Radley Balko, editor of Reason Magazine, to complain "So not only can you not be sure the people banging down your door at night are the police, not only can you not be sure they’re the police even if they say they’re the police, you can’t even be sure it’s safe to let them in even if they are the police."[4][5][6]

• Tracy Ingle was shot in his house five times during a no-knock raid in North Little Rock, Arkansas. After the police entered the house Tracy thought armed robbers had entered the house and intended to scare them away with a non-working gun. The police expected to find drugs, but none were found. He was brought to the intensive care, but police pulled him out of intensive care for questioning, after which they arrested him and charged him with assault on the officers who shot him.[7][8]

• Ismael Mena, a Mexican immigrant, was shot and killed by SWAT team officers in Denver, Colorado who were performing a no-knock raid that was approved by a judge acting on false information contained in a search warrant. The police believed there to be drugs in the house, but no drugs were found on the premises, and it was later revealed that the address given to the SWAT team by officer Joseph Bini was the wrong one. Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas investigated the matter and cleared the officers involved with the raid on the grounds that Mena had pointed a gun and fired it at SWAT officers, although who fired first remains unknown. However, many have objected to the investigation's findings due to inconsistencies in the various officers' account of what happened. The American Civil Liberties Union, and others, have objected to the Denver Police Department's request for a no-knock raid and the Judge's decision to allow such a raid on the grounds that they failed to meet the criteria necessary for a no-knock raid.[9]

• US Marine Jose Guerena was shot twenty-two times by a SWAT team planning to execute a search warrant. He retrieved a legally possessed rifle in response to sudden intruders, and the SWAT team opened fire on him before establishing any communication. The team later retracted its initial claims he had opened fire when it was established that Guerena had never fired and his safety was still on. The police refused to allow paramedics to access Guerena for more than hour, leaving Guerena to bleed to death, alone, in his own home. Members of the SWAT team subsequently hired legal defense and a large following of fellow Marines held a memorial service at his home with his widow.

[KoolBreeze]

Yeah, it's over the top. When they screw up they should have to face consequences same as anybody else. The no knock searches should be outlawed outright. Yeah, knocking gives the occupants time to dispose of evidence, but it isn't worth the risk of killing an innocent person.

[TheTman]

From LewRockwell.com - Anti-State, Anti-War, Pro-Capitalist.
"According to one very conservative estimate, at least thirty citizens are killed in police shootings every month, many of which occur during paramilitary raids conducted, Soviet-style, at daybreak or nighttime. Innocent people are frequently found among those killed, wounded, or brutalized in those raids; one recent example is 76-year-old New York resident Jose Colon, who was shot in the stomach by a SWAT operator who pulled the trigger trying to operate a flashlight on his tricked-out pistol."
"The grim but statistically inescapable fact is that the average American is much more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist."

At the same time, the cops are convinced there is a war against cops, and in some places I have to believe that is true.

"On the basis of recent trends, we can assume that two dozen or more Americans have been shot by police since January 1, 2011. In the same period, roughly half that many police have been shot, 11 of them either injured or killed during one unusually bloody twenty-four-hour period. This unconnected series of shootings has led many police officers to believe that they are targets in a "war on cops," and that alarmist impression has been diligently propagated by police union officials who are always eager to exaggerate the very modest dangers of their profession.

"It's not a fluke," insists Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. "There's a perception among officers in the field that there's a war on cops going on." Craig W. Floyd of the National Law Enforcement Officers
Memorial Fund described a “very troubling trend” of “officers … being put at greater risk than ever before.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/01/w...can-civilians/

So the cops think that the thugs are out to get them, (correct) and are on edge anyway, cause "someone" might be out to get them right now. And then they get thrown into crazy situations. They don't want to get shot, so maybe they are a little bit quick to shoot, I'm not there, I don't know what they are thinking, but maybe if they had to answer to a civilian authority when they screwed up, and not just let the police department sweep it under the rug, maybe we'd see a little less of getting the wrong house, and shooting someone cause the camera looked like a gun, or whatever. Maybe a cop would die, because he took an extra second to see if that WAS a gun. I don't know. We don't want good cops dying. I think they know when they need to be on guard. But there is always the chance when you wear a badge you might not make it home that shift.
I'm not saying we should go filing charges on every little thing, but some of the more outrageous things, should not just be filed away as an over reaction, or blamed on the victim. No need to go on a witch hunt either. Just a review when a person get's killed at the wrong address, and things like that, things that should have been easily avoided.

[muggsy]

This article talks about the militarization of the police, and how it's lead to deaths of innocent people, as well as deaths of people for some pretty minor offenses.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...780519904.html

It just goes to show you, if your growing pot in your basement don't piss off your girlfriend. I have zero sympathy for any a-hole who is into illegal drug use or distribution. I do have sympathy for the six officers he wounded in the raid. Don't do the crime if you can do the crime and keep your eye on the sparrow.

[MD_Vet]

It just goes to show you, if your growing pot in your basement don't piss off your girlfriend. I have zero sympathy for any a-hole who is into illegal drug use or distribution. I do have sympathy for the six officers he wounded in the raid. Don't do the crime if you can do the crime and keep your eye on the sparrow.

Muggsy....have you been sniffing glue again....

[downtownv]

From LewRockwell.com - Anti-State, Anti-War, Pro-Capitalist.
"According to one very conservative estimate, at least thirty citizens are killed in police shootings every month, many of which occur during paramilitary raids conducted, Soviet-style, at daybreak or nighttime. Innocent people are frequently found among those killed, wounded, or brutalized in those raids; one recent example is 76-year-old New York resident Jose Colon, who was shot in the stomach by a SWAT operator who pulled the trigger trying to operate a flashlight on his tricked-out pistol."
"The grim but statistically inescapable fact is that the average American is much more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist."

At the same time, the cops are convinced there is a war against cops, and in some places I have to believe that is true.

"On the basis of recent trends, we can assume that two dozen or more Americans have been shot by police since January 1, 2011. In the same period, roughly half that many police have been shot, 11 of them either injured or killed during one unusually bloody twenty-four-hour period. This unconnected series of shootings has led many police officers to believe that they are targets in a "war on cops," and that alarmist impression has been diligently propagated by police union officials who are always eager to exaggerate the very modest dangers of their profession.

"It's not a fluke," insists Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. "There's a perception among officers in the field that there's a war on cops going on." Craig W. Floyd of the National Law Enforcement Officers
Memorial Fund described a “very troubling trend” of “officers … being put at greater risk than ever before.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/01/w...can-civilians/

So the cops think that the thugs are out to get them, (correct) and are on edge anyway, cause "someone" might be out to get them right now. And then they get thrown into crazy situations. They don't want to get shot, so maybe they are a little bit quick to shoot, I'm not there, I don't know what they are thinking, but maybe if they had to answer to a civilian authority when they screwed up, and not just let the police department sweep it under the rug, maybe we'd see a little less of getting the wrong house, and shooting someone cause the camera looked like a gun, or whatever. Maybe a cop would die, because he took an extra second to see if that WAS a gun. I don't know. We don't want good cops dying. I think they know when they need to be on guard. But there is always the chance when you wear a badge you might not make it home that shift.
I'm not saying we should go filing charges on every little thing, but some of the more outrageous things, should not just be filed away as an over reaction, or blamed on the victim. No need to go on a witch hunt either. Just a review when a person get's killed at the wrong address, and things like that, things that should have been easily avoided.

Oh and these statistics go into Gun Death's and gunshots on a national data base count. As well as suicides and police shootings. Just to keep the public stupid.

[AJBert]

I find this thread just a bit ironic as I was sent over to Iraq in '07 to TEACH the Iraqi Police about "community policing".

Before '03, the Iraqi Police were used to "remove" citizens who may have spoken any displeasure with the current regime.

I do believe the police need to be armed better than the criminals. There are more than a few cases on the books that prove this. I also believe there is a need for the "no knock" entrance into buildings/residences. I also believe there will be mistakes on correct addresses. After all, these are humans.

However, there should be consequences involved when there are glaring mistakes. No sure how often compensation is made to those who have been wronged by these mistakes. Makes one wondered why an individual can receive $$$ for spilling coffee from a drive through on their lap because they didn't know it might be a little hot but others wronged by the police/gov't have no recourse.

[TheTman]

What about the ones that weren't doing anything wrong Muggs, shoot them just for breathing?

[muggsy]

Muggsy....have you been sniffing glue again....

I'm into Hoppes #9, not glue.

[muggsy]

What about the ones that weren't doing anything wrong Muggs, shoot them just for breathing?

I have never encounter a police officer who didn't treat me with the utmost respect. It could be because I treat the police with the utmost respect. I'm not saying that there aren't any bad cops or that the bad cops should be removed. What I am saying is that I don't see a police state in this country, but then I'm not borderline paranoid.

[TheTman]

Muggsy, it's not about YOUR experiences. I reckon most of us have never had a bad encounter with the cops. I think we are by nature a law-abiding bunch of folks.

All I'm asking is that some of these incidents be investigated by some agency other than internal affairs, that won't just sweep it under the rug and give the cop a few weeks paid vacation. Some agency that will listen too and stand up for the abused, or the dead victim's family's.
You must have a very limited world view, if you're not at least a little worried, or even paranoid about what's happening in this country and world today. When they kick your door down in the middle of the night, on a bad drug tip, or wrong address, or some other erroneous information, and kill you for reaching for your shoes, and they thought it was a gun, it won't matter squat how well you've treated cops or been treated by them. I suppose in that case you'd be just fine with the cop getting a couple weeks paid leave and no real consequences to pay.