The Gun Fight in Washington. Your opinons?

"It's like a police state--not something I ever thought I'd see in my country."

Academics such as Peter Kraska, a criminologist who has studied the growing use of SWAT teams in cities across the country, echo Garcia's concern.

The fatal raid, Kraska said, highlights a troubling trend--the tendency of law enforcement agencies to rely on paramilitary police units to execute warrants in drug cases. Such an approach is risky and often unnecessary, he said.

Would you care for me to list all the innocent home owners that have a SWAT raid that have the whole family laying on the floor with guns at their heads in the last year?

Nothing there from the last year.

Nothing there from the last 5 years.

Seems like lightning is a hell of a lot more dangerous that SWAT teams.

I offer to cover last year for innocent homeowners finding themselves on the floor with their family at gun point and you ask for examples of innocent citizens being killed instead by swat teams.

Re: parados (Post 5239957)
Quote:
Seems like lightning is a hell of a lot more dangerous that SWAT teams.


Hmm so are mass killings of children in schools and I find it strange you do not seems to care about innocents including children that are killed by government actions but only when a madman is behind the trigger.

At least a madman have the excuse that he is mad unlike the government agents.

We got along fine without having the police acting as toy soldiers when serving warrants for most of the history of this country.

What to reduced violence end the so call war on drugs and rearmed and train the police to better fitted their role as peace officers not the US version of the German SS.

o deaths in the last year.
No injuries in the last year.
No incident even in the last year.

Florida Police Pound On Wrong Door Looking For Suspect Without Identifying Themselves . . . Then Shoot And Kill Innocent Man Who Answers The Door With Weapon

Published 1, July 17, 2012 Criminal law , Society 65 Comments
Sheriff deputies in Lake County, Florida are the focus of public outcry after they went to the wrong home to arrest an attempted murder suspect, did not announce they were officers, and then shot and killed Andrew Lee Scott, 26, when he pointed a gun at the strangers at his door.


Scott went to the door armed after he heard pounding on his door at 1:30 a.m. Since the officers did not identify themselves and Brown was not expecting someone at such an early hour, he clearly thought it was trouble. It was.

They were looking for Jonathan Brown who is suspected of attempted murder. Brown had been seen in the complex and his motorcycle was parked across from Scott’s front door. So the only connection to Scott was that the motorcycle was across from his door in a large complex. Yet police still did not announce that they were officers.

This is technically not a “no knock” search. In such searches, there is no knock but the officers are supposed to announce their identities in going into the property. We have seen tragedies like this one involving such searches. Indeed, I have criticized the increasing use of “no knock” warrants. Police now routinely ask and receive warrants that waive the constitutional requirement to “knock and announcement.” Not only is this requirement codified in the U.S. Code, but it is viewed as a factor in determining if a search or seizure is reasonable under the fourth amendment. In 1995, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Wilson v. Arkansas that the requirement was indeed part of the constitutional test and in Richards v. Wisconsin the Court later rejected categorical waivers for “knock and announcement” for cases like drug investigations. Police must show on a case-by-case basis that they have reasonable suspicion of exigent circumstances.

In this case, it would seem that police should have been more careful to announce their identities since they had no clear evidence that the suspect was in the apartment. Given the time of night and the large number of lawfully held guns, the chances that the owner would be in fear of the visitors was great — particularly in a crime ridden neighborhood. I understand the fear of letting the suspect know of the presence of the officers but, given the dangers, the balance of considerations favors identification by the officers in my view. What do you think?

Source: WESH

Several teams of Pima County Police Officers in SWAT gear entered into the home of a 26-year-old Ex-Marine.

Marine Survives Two Tours in Iraq, SWAT Kills Him
Tim Cavanaugh|May. 16, 2011 10:55 pm

"Please send me an ambulance and you can ask more questions later, please!"

Guerena tells the dispatcher that her husband had returned home about 6:30 a.m. after work and was sleeping.

Prompted by the dispatcher, Guerena says her husband was shot in the stomach and hands.

The dispatcher asks Guerena to put her cheek next to her husband's nose and mouth to see if he's breathing, but she replies in Spanish that her husband is face- down.

The operator tells Guerena to grab a cloth and apply pressure to his wounds, but the wife responds frantically: "I can't! I can't! There's a bunch of people outside of my house. I don't know what the heck is happening!"

A dispatcher asks if the people outside are the SWAT members. "I think it's the SWAT, but they ... Oh my God!" Guerena says.

A dispatcher asks that she open the door for the SWAT, but Guerena replies that the door was already opened by police.

"Is anybody coming? Is anybody coming?" she asks.

The operator tells Guerena help is on the way, but they're still trying to figure out what happened.

"I don't know, that's it, whatever I told you, that's it," Guerena says.

Just after the five-minute mark, Guerena's end of the line goes silent.

The two dispatchers spend about four minutes talking to each other and calling out for Guerena while trying to figure out if the call is coming from the same residence where the warrant was served. At the end of the 10-minute 911 call, a dispatcher says she has confirmation that Guerena is outside with deputies on the scene.

This is from Arizona Daily Star reporter Fernanda Echavarri's effort to piece together the death of Jose Guerena, 26, at the hands of a Pima County, Arizona SWAT team. Guerena, who joined the Marines in 2002 and served two tours in Iraq, was killed just after 9 a.m. May 5. Guerera had just gone to bed after working a 12-hour shift at a local mine when his home was invaded as part of a multi-house crackdown by sheriff's deputies.

Like enemy of the state Osama bin Laden, Guerena died with his wife close by. Widow Vanessa Guerena, who hid with her four-year-old son when sheriff's deputies raided the home, fills in detail that has been slow to come from Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik’s office:

"When I came out the officers dragged me through the kitchen and took me outside, and that's when I saw him laying there gasping for air," Vanessa Guerena said. "I kept begging the officers to call an ambulance that maybe he could make it and that my baby was still inside."

The little boy soon after walked out of the closet on his own. SWAT members took him outside to be with his mother.

"I never imagined I would lose him like that, he was badly injured but I never thought he could be killed by police after he served his country," Vanessa Guerena said.

The family's 5-year-old son was at school that morning and deputies say they thought Guerena's wife and his other child would also be gone when they entered the home.

Guerena says there were no drugs in their house.

Deputies said they seized a "large sum of money from another house" that morning. But they refused to say from which of the homes searched that morning they found narcotics, drug ledgers or drug paraphernalia. Court documents showing what was being sought and was found have not been made public. A computer check on Guerena revealed a couple of traffic tickets and no criminal history.

Tucson KGUN’s Joel Waldman says the SWAT team prevented paramedics from going to work on Guerena for one hour and fourteen minutes.

The sheriff’s department maintains that Guerena was holding an AR-15 when the paramilitary force fired 71 bullets in his home, but other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While PCSD initially claimed Guerena fired the weapon he was alleged to have been holding, the department now says it was a misfire by one of the deputies that caused this deadly group panic inside a home containing a woman and a toddler:

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, [PCSD spokesman Michael] O'Connor said.

Questions about the official story from Ghost32.

Brooklyn Protesters Allege Police Brutality, Anti-LGBT Slurs in Arrest of Jabbar Campbell

In Brooklyn, a group of demonstrators marched to the police precinct in the neighborhood of Crown Heights to demand justice in the case of Jabbar Campbell, an African-American man who has accused officers from the New York City Police Department of a hate crime. Campbell says he was hosting a party for gay and lesbian friends at his home earlier this month when he was confronted by police. Surveillance footage from Campbell’s apartment shows officers tampering with and turning around the camera monitoring his doorstep. Moments later, Campbell says he was brutally beaten and called anti-LGBT slurs. On Monday, Campbell address supporters outside the precinct.
Jabbar Campbell: "We need to speak up and let these officers know that they can’t go around invading people’s homes, tampering with their property, and beating up innocent people, treating them like animals. I was an innocent man, and I was brutalized by these officers from the 77th Precinct. And I’m here to speak up and fight back."

This is easy for you to suggest, but one of the reasons you have not responded to my suggestion that you volunteer to serve warrants on individuals in homes where it is know there are guns..

Once more we always been a heavily arm society and yet the police did not need to used SWAT for most of our country history.

Second there is zero proof that I had seen that the serving of everyday warrants by using SWAT teams are in any manner safer for anyone including the police then knocking on the door would be.

Frankly any police officers who knocked on my door to serve a warrant is completely safe however breaking down that door and rushing into my home in the middle of the night they are in real danger of being hit by at least 12 gauge shotguns blasts.

Footnote for myself I would feel far more safer in serving a warrant in almost all cases in knocking and announcing myself instead of breaking down a door in the middle of the night were the homeowners have every reason to think that they are victims of a armed home invasion.

Wow.... you have one instance in the last 12 months and it wasn't a SWAT team.
OMG!!!
No wonder you are so paranoid of the Federal government. One instance of local police and the Federal government is horrible

o let's recap...
You still have zero instances of SWAT breaking down a door in the last 12 months. I won't hold my breath as I wait for you to find one or more to back up your claims.

But if you would be allowed to decide...ahhh, you apparently are never going to understand anyway.

My my it does not matter to you if innocent men and women and children are being killed by SWAT teams.