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> 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 cas

> 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
        That is an argument. Where is the evidence to support that argument? The US is also a country with SWATting, because people know the police come in with a huge amount of force, and the application of that force can be mentally and physically abusive to the targets of the SWATting - the side effect is the goal. If the police are not prepared to handle something as simple as bringing in a robe or blanket to preserve a half-naked woman's sense of decency, then they are deliberately avoiding making these raids less abusive.
        philwelch 3y ago
        > Where is the evidence to support that argument? I’ve presented evidence that people actually do prepare ambushes for the police and that the basic threat isn’t purely hypothetical. It should be obvious that being taken by surprise prevents someone from preparing an ambush; if you think about the basic concepts of “surprise” and “preparing an ambush” for a few minutes I have faith you can figure out why! > If the police are not prepared to handle something as simple as bringing in a robe or blanket to preserve a half-naked woman's sense of decency, then they are deliberately avoiding making these raids less abusive. They probably did, but the “protesters” have a specific bias and a specific agenda so they likely added some lies and exaggerations to the story. This sort of thing happens all the time. And the Guardian took their word for it because of their biases.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y 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. Like I said (and you apparently didn't read) the trend (which you seem to not have studied) shows how cop-safety had increased for many years before cops declared war on citizens (and outfitted/trained accordingly) - at which point the trend sort of continued in the same direction but was now a lot less steady. > Are you seriously accusing me of being a shill for companies that make SWAT gear? Give me a break. No. You introduced that twist into the conversation. I don't know why you did. I was introducing the mantra and where it's found useful. But since you've raised the notion of shilling, I could agree that police fans would also find it a useful chant. > suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement. As far as incidents that resemble domestic terrorism go, no-knock raids come as close as they can. That would seem to make police a major (if not the largest) domestic source of attack-driven fear and terror.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > Like I said (and you apparently didn't read) the trend (which you seem to not have studied) shows how cop-safety had increased for many years before cops declared war on citizens (and outfitted/trained accordingly) - at which point the trend sort of continued in the same direction but was now a lot less steady. You went back and edited your comment after I replied to it. Most of the changes in police tactics are motivated by specific incidents, many of which involved officer deaths. You’re positing some imaginary world where the police adopted SWAT tactics and gear for literally no reason when in reality, it was because of deadly incidents such as the 1970 Newhall shooting, 1980 Norco shootout, 1986 Miami Dade shootout, and the 1997 North Hollywood shootout—all instances of law enforcement being outgunned by violent criminals, and in all but the last of these cases, getting killed as a result. Each of these incidents resulted in changes in equipment, training, and procedures.
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        > You went back and edited your comment after I replied to it. After editing and posting I saw no replies. I left for work. > Most of the changes in police tactics are motivated by specific incidents, many of which involved officer deaths. This is indeed a selling point of militarizing cops but the justification doesn't jibe well with generations of decreasing police death rates. > You’re positing some imaginary world where the police adopted SWAT tactics and gear for literally no reason... Not for no reason. Unions, agencies/depts, pols and police industries have crafted many reasons. Universally those reasons exclude the super critical part about generations of decreasing police deaths. > in reality, it was because of deadly incidents [cites incidents that long, long predate the spikey part of decreasing police deaths]. It's kind of hard to draw a parallel between widely disparate events - some so historical that people involved in them have died of old age - and the much more recent amping up of police aggression. > Each of these incidents resulted in changes in equipment, training, and procedures. I would agree that LEO events from 50 years ago eventually contributed to the 40 year decline in police deaths that continues today. A big one is the Church committee's exposure of FBI domestic surveillance. That pressured the agency to refocus on it's law enforcement duties. And that coincides with the sharp reduction of domestic terror attacks, from the historical 1970 high of ~400/year to decades of much, much lower DT rates.
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.

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
      That is an argument. Where is the evidence to support that argument? The US is also a country with SWATting, because people know the police come in with a huge amount of force, and the application of that force can be mentally and physically abusive to the targets of the SWATting - the side effect is the goal. If the police are not prepared to handle something as simple as bringing in a robe or blanket to preserve a half-naked woman's sense of decency, then they are deliberately avoiding making these raids less abusive.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        > Where is the evidence to support that argument? I’ve presented evidence that people actually do prepare ambushes for the police and that the basic threat isn’t purely hypothetical. It should be obvious that being taken by surprise prevents someone from preparing an ambush; if you think about the basic concepts of “surprise” and “preparing an ambush” for a few minutes I have faith you can figure out why! > If the police are not prepared to handle something as simple as bringing in a robe or blanket to preserve a half-naked woman's sense of decency, then they are deliberately avoiding making these raids less abusive. They probably did, but the “protesters” have a specific bias and a specific agenda so they likely added some lies and exaggerations to the story. This sort of thing happens all the time. And the Guardian took their word for it because of their biases.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y 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. Like I said (and you apparently didn't read) the trend (which you seem to not have studied) shows how cop-safety had increased for many years before cops declared war on citizens (and outfitted/trained accordingly) - at which point the trend sort of continued in the same direction but was now a lot less steady. > Are you seriously accusing me of being a shill for companies that make SWAT gear? Give me a break. No. You introduced that twist into the conversation. I don't know why you did. I was introducing the mantra and where it's found useful. But since you've raised the notion of shilling, I could agree that police fans would also find it a useful chant. > suspected domestic terrorists with an animosity towards law enforcement. As far as incidents that resemble domestic terrorism go, no-knock raids come as close as they can. That would seem to make police a major (if not the largest) domestic source of attack-driven fear and terror.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > Like I said (and you apparently didn't read) the trend (which you seem to not have studied) shows how cop-safety had increased for many years before cops declared war on citizens (and outfitted/trained accordingly) - at which point the trend sort of continued in the same direction but was now a lot less steady. You went back and edited your comment after I replied to it. Most of the changes in police tactics are motivated by specific incidents, many of which involved officer deaths. You’re positing some imaginary world where the police adopted SWAT tactics and gear for literally no reason when in reality, it was because of deadly incidents such as the 1970 Newhall shooting, 1980 Norco shootout, 1986 Miami Dade shootout, and the 1997 North Hollywood shootout—all instances of law enforcement being outgunned by violent criminals, and in all but the last of these cases, getting killed as a result. Each of these incidents resulted in changes in equipment, training, and procedures.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > You went back and edited your comment after I replied to it. After editing and posting I saw no replies. I left for work. > Most of the changes in police tactics are motivated by specific incidents, many of which involved officer deaths. This is indeed a selling point of militarizing cops but the justification doesn't jibe well with generations of decreasing police death rates. > You’re positing some imaginary world where the police adopted SWAT tactics and gear for literally no reason... Not for no reason. Unions, agencies/depts, pols and police industries have crafted many reasons. Universally those reasons exclude the super critical part about generations of decreasing police deaths. > in reality, it was because of deadly incidents [cites incidents that long, long predate the spikey part of decreasing police deaths]. It's kind of hard to draw a parallel between widely disparate events - some so historical that people involved in them have died of old age - and the much more recent amping up of police aggression. > Each of these incidents resulted in changes in equipment, training, and procedures. I would agree that LEO events from 50 years ago eventually contributed to the 40 year decline in police deaths that continues today. A big one is the Church committee's exposure of FBI domestic surveillance. That pressured the agency to refocus on it's law enforcement duties. And that coincides with the sharp reduction of domestic terror attacks, from the historical 1970 high of ~400/year to decades of much, much lower DT rates.

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.