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Why execute the search warrant at 6am? Why use a flash grenade on sleeping people? Any raid that early must expect to find naked people sleeping as a lot of Am

Why execute the search warrant at 6am? Why use a flash grenade on sleeping people? Any raid that early must expect to find naked people sleeping as a lot of Americans sleep naked. (I see numbers including 8%, 12%, 17%, 28.5%, and "58 percent of Millennials"). The numbers are higher if you include partially clothed. Why do the police have no procedures in place for what must surely be a common occurrence, like a blanket or robe they can provide to a detained half-naked woman? I agree that it comes across like the psychological torment of the occupants of the residences is part of the reason for executing the search warrant this way. Just because it's a domestic terrorism case does not mean the suspects - who may well be innocent - should be treated this way.

philwelch 3y ago
> Why execute the search warrant at 6am? Why use a flash grenade on sleeping people? To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search. This is a case of organized, premeditated violence motivated by opposition to law enforcement; obviously a high risk situation.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  >To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search. The trend of cops being safer every year hasn't changed in generations. Militarizing police and treating citizens as armed combatants didn't budge the overall trend. However, when war-grade policing rolled out, the officer-safety trend became spiker than it had been. ref: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-cause-historical/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforceme... > This is a case of organized, premeditated violence motivated by opposition to law enforcement; obviously a high risk situation. Fear-the-public mantra is super helpful to companies that sell gear to maximize civilian harm (and PDs who adore that gear). It doesn't serve the public well, however.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > Cops are as safe as they were generations ago. Actually, according to the data you shared, they’re safer, at least from gunfire and stabbing. This is probably a direct result of these precautions. > Fear-the-public mantra is super helpful to companies that sell gear to maximize civilian harm Are you seriously accusing me of being a shill for companies that make SWAT gear? Give me a break. I don’t think every search warrant needs to be executed with a predawn raid and flashbangs, but those measures are clearly warranted if the search warrant is for a residence inhabited by suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement.
    - eesmith 3y ago
      > but those measures are clearly warranted if the search warrant is for a residence inhabited by suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement. What evidence do they have that this is the case, and that other approaches - like a 9am raid - don't have better outcomes for everyone involved? How many raids like this result in a finding that such a raid was not necessary? How does that compare to raids carried out during normal working hours? Even if a 6am raid is warranted, why didn't the authorities have gowns or robes or other means in place given the high likelihood that some of the people would be naked or half-naked, in order to protect the detainee's sense of decency and humanity? If no guns or explosives are found, and these people are never arrested, never tried, or never convicted, can we retroactively say the raids was needlessly harsh, and thus casting doubt on the reasoning the police use to justify this sort of raid in the first place, or do we always give the benefit of doubt to the police? (In the same way we are told the police sniffer dogs are 100% trustworthy when they indicate drugs, and cannot be assumed to be following a signal from their handler.)
      - philwelch 3y ago
        > What evidence do they have that this is the case, and that other approaches - like a 9am raid - don't have better outcomes for everyone involved? The point of raiding earlier in the morning is that if you catch the suspects by surprise while they’re asleep, they’re less likely to be tipped off and ambush the officers. This sort of thing happens more often than you think. What’s more, we live in a country where people will literally make false 911 calls in order to lure random police into an ambush and kill them, like this incident in Bristol, CT in 2022. (https://apnews.com/article/shootings-connecticut-bristol-hartford-6efd1a56f0f7f958698eff0068de6bef https://apnews.com/article/shootings-connecticut-bristol-har...) So yes, it is absolutely reasonable for the police to consider the possibility that a suspect might just want to kill a cop for the sake of killing a cop—especially in a domestic terrorism case that is primarily motivated by hating cops in the first place! > If no guns or explosives are found, and these people are never arrested, never tried, or never convicted, can we retroactively say the raids was needlessly harsh, and thus casting doubt on the reasoning the police use to justify this sort of raid in the first place You can’t judge these things in hindsight. They made the decision they did with the information they had at the time, and in order to get a search warrant, they had to convince a judge that they had probable cause based on the evidence available to them already. And you continue to ignore the fact that dozens of people have been indicted in this same case already.
- eesmith 3y ago
  > obviously a high risk situation. Yes, that's how a police state justifies the primacy of the needs of police over the rest of the civilian population. We know executing search warrants like this are risky, because people have died in these sorts of raids, and flash grenades have severely injured babies like https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-gave-police-cover-raids-gone-wrong-rcna135100 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-ga... or https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-toddler-georgia/toddler-badly-burned-by-police-device-during-georgia-drug-raid-idUSKBN0EA1PY20140530/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-toddler-georgia/toddl... in Atlanta. Including on raids that were sent to the wrong address, or where the person they were looking for was not home. We know people are woken up, surprised, think they are being robbed by an armed gang and shot to defend themselves, only to be killed by the police. And we know the police exaggerate and hype up the danger level, to justify the use of drastic techniques which are dangerous to the people being investigated. In https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/family-of-teen-killed-during-mobile-police-pre-dawn-swat-raid-sees-body-camera-video/ https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/family-of-teen-killed-dur... the police did a surprise raid at 5:30am. A 16-year old pointed a laser-sighted handgun at the officers, likely thinking they were criminals attacking, and the cops shot and killed him. To make it worse, the person they were seeking wasn't there. To make it even more worse, person they were seeking was later arrested on a marijuana warrant after turning himself in. We know the police ALWAYS justify the tactics used in their early morning raid as "To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search", and there's no way to refute them because they always argue it could have been worse. Why should we believe the police in Georgia were any more correct in their assessment? Where is their experimental evidence which supports pre-dawn raids over other approaches, like even a 9am raid? Why should we believe there was no other reasonable way to conduct the raid which would have been just as safe for the police while showing much more respect to the people being raided? Why should we trust what they say when we know there's a long history of them exaggerating the danger?
  - philwelch 3y ago
    I don't think every search warrant needs to be executed with a pre-dawn raid. I do think that these measures are called for when investigating a domestic terror group with an avowed animosity towards law enforcement. The old adage about safety regulations being written in blood is also true for law enforcement procedures, and while I agree these measures are sometimes excessive, I don't think it's excessive in cases like this.

philwelch 3y ago

> Why execute the search warrant at 6am? Why use a flash grenade on sleeping people? To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search. This is a case of organized, premeditated violence motivated by opposition to law enforcement; obviously a high risk situation.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
>To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search. The trend of cops being safer every year hasn't changed in generations. Militarizing police and treating citizens as armed combatants didn't budge the overall trend. However, when war-grade policing rolled out, the officer-safety trend became spiker than it had been. ref: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforcement-deaths-by-cause-historical/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070627/us-law-enforceme... > This is a case of organized, premeditated violence motivated by opposition to law enforcement; obviously a high risk situation. Fear-the-public mantra is super helpful to companies that sell gear to maximize civilian harm (and PDs who adore that gear). It doesn't serve the public well, however.
- philwelch 3y ago
  > Cops are as safe as they were generations ago. Actually, according to the data you shared, they’re safer, at least from gunfire and stabbing. This is probably a direct result of these precautions. > Fear-the-public mantra is super helpful to companies that sell gear to maximize civilian harm Are you seriously accusing me of being a shill for companies that make SWAT gear? Give me a break. I don’t think every search warrant needs to be executed with a predawn raid and flashbangs, but those measures are clearly warranted if the search warrant is for a residence inhabited by suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    > but those measures are clearly warranted if the search warrant is for a residence inhabited by suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement. What evidence do they have that this is the case, and that other approaches - like a 9am raid - don't have better outcomes for everyone involved? How many raids like this result in a finding that such a raid was not necessary? How does that compare to raids carried out during normal working hours? Even if a 6am raid is warranted, why didn't the authorities have gowns or robes or other means in place given the high likelihood that some of the people would be naked or half-naked, in order to protect the detainee's sense of decency and humanity? If no guns or explosives are found, and these people are never arrested, never tried, or never convicted, can we retroactively say the raids was needlessly harsh, and thus casting doubt on the reasoning the police use to justify this sort of raid in the first place, or do we always give the benefit of doubt to the police? (In the same way we are told the police sniffer dogs are 100% trustworthy when they indicate drugs, and cannot be assumed to be following a signal from their handler.)
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > What evidence do they have that this is the case, and that other approaches - like a 9am raid - don't have better outcomes for everyone involved? The point of raiding earlier in the morning is that if you catch the suspects by surprise while they’re asleep, they’re less likely to be tipped off and ambush the officers. This sort of thing happens more often than you think. What’s more, we live in a country where people will literally make false 911 calls in order to lure random police into an ambush and kill them, like this incident in Bristol, CT in 2022. (https://apnews.com/article/shootings-connecticut-bristol-hartford-6efd1a56f0f7f958698eff0068de6bef https://apnews.com/article/shootings-connecticut-bristol-har...) So yes, it is absolutely reasonable for the police to consider the possibility that a suspect might just want to kill a cop for the sake of killing a cop—especially in a domestic terrorism case that is primarily motivated by hating cops in the first place! > If no guns or explosives are found, and these people are never arrested, never tried, or never convicted, can we retroactively say the raids was needlessly harsh, and thus casting doubt on the reasoning the police use to justify this sort of raid in the first place You can’t judge these things in hindsight. They made the decision they did with the information they had at the time, and in order to get a search warrant, they had to convince a judge that they had probable cause based on the evidence available to them already. And you continue to ignore the fact that dozens of people have been indicted in this same case already.
eesmith 3y ago
> obviously a high risk situation. Yes, that's how a police state justifies the primacy of the needs of police over the rest of the civilian population. We know executing search warrants like this are risky, because people have died in these sorts of raids, and flash grenades have severely injured babies like https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-gave-police-cover-raids-gone-wrong-rcna135100 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/supreme-court-ga... or https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-toddler-georgia/toddler-badly-burned-by-police-device-during-georgia-drug-raid-idUSKBN0EA1PY20140530/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-toddler-georgia/toddl... in Atlanta. Including on raids that were sent to the wrong address, or where the person they were looking for was not home. We know people are woken up, surprised, think they are being robbed by an armed gang and shot to defend themselves, only to be killed by the police. And we know the police exaggerate and hype up the danger level, to justify the use of drastic techniques which are dangerous to the people being investigated. In https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/family-of-teen-killed-during-mobile-police-pre-dawn-swat-raid-sees-body-camera-video/ https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/family-of-teen-killed-dur... the police did a surprise raid at 5:30am. A 16-year old pointed a laser-sighted handgun at the officers, likely thinking they were criminals attacking, and the cops shot and killed him. To make it worse, the person they were seeking wasn't there. To make it even more worse, person they were seeking was later arrested on a marijuana warrant after turning himself in. We know the police ALWAYS justify the tactics used in their early morning raid as "To minimize the danger to the officers executing the search", and there's no way to refute them because they always argue it could have been worse. Why should we believe the police in Georgia were any more correct in their assessment? Where is their experimental evidence which supports pre-dawn raids over other approaches, like even a 9am raid? Why should we believe there was no other reasonable way to conduct the raid which would have been just as safe for the police while showing much more respect to the people being raided? Why should we trust what they say when we know there's a long history of them exaggerating the danger?
- philwelch 3y ago
  I don't think every search warrant needs to be executed with a pre-dawn raid. I do think that these measures are called for when investigating a domestic terror group with an avowed animosity towards law enforcement. The old adage about safety regulations being written in blood is also true for law enforcement procedures, and while I agree these measures are sometimes excessive, I don't think it's excessive in cases like this.