What happens when they kick in your door at 3 am?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

UPDATE: A couple of more caveats, I am not attempting to slag the ability of police to do these tasks simply pointing out that they are not permitted the time to train to the level they should. Given that time I would be much more comfortable with them conducting these raids. Plus I  also understand that there are drug raids where serious bad guys have tons of seriously bad things. If there is a good reason to suspect this, then go in with all you got. I just believe that many of the raids conducted are looked at as chances to do a live practice on targets where there is no reason for that level of force.

Radley Balko of the libertarian Cato Institute and one of my favorite blogs The Agitator, has released a paper on the militarization of local SWAT units and the attendant Overkill, as the paper is titled. He focuses on the trend toward outfitting SWAT teams with all the same type gear (and more) that we used when I was busy kicking in doors doing hostage rescue or snatch operations. Then once these units are constituted a need for their services is required to justify the expense, and all too often that has been the serving of drug warrants to non-violent possible offenders. The problem is that bad intel, poor planning, lack of training and the inherent difficulty of safely conducting these types of no-knock raids leads to deaths and damages that were likely unnecessary.

The full Uncle J treatment

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What happens when they kick in your door at 3 am?

UPDATE: A couple of more caveats, I am not attempting to slag the ability of police to do these tasks simply pointing out that they are not permitted the time to train to the level they should. Given that time I would be much more comfortable with them conducting these raids. Plus I  also understand that there are drug raids where serious bad guys have tons of seriously bad things. If there is a good reason to suspect this, then go in with all you got. I just believe that many of the raids conducted are looked at as chances to do a live practice on targets where there is no reason for that level of force.

Radley Balko of the libertarian Cato Institute and one of my favorite blogs The Agitator, has released a paper on the militarization of local SWAT units and the attendant Overkill, as the paper is titled. He focuses on the trend toward outfitting SWAT teams with all the same type gear (and more) that we used when I was busy kicking in doors doing hostage rescue or snatch operations. Then once these units are constituted a need for their services is required to justify the expense, and all too often that has been the serving of drug warrants to non-violent possible offenders. The problem is that bad intel, poor planning, lack of training and the inherent difficulty of safely conducting these types of no-knock raids leads to deaths and damages that were likely unnecessary.

The full Uncle J treatment

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