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The increasing militarization of police in the USA has seemingly had a significant (and hopefully unintended) side-effect: Police tend to treat suspects (and th

The increasing militarization of police in the USA has seemingly had a significant (and hopefully unintended) side-effect: Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants.

malandrew 12y ago
Is this enough to be able to challenge the constitutionality out of SWAT team usage and no-knock warrants, based on the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. For example, in this case, the police were looking for one individual and found a family inside. Shouldn't the police treat them all as innocent instead of enemy combatants until they've positively identified the suspect? If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make since hazards are part of the job they have chosen to perform. Using SWAT teams externalizes the risk and danger of the job. IMHO, it should be a high bar to meet to justify the use of SWAT teams in any situation. A judge should have to sign off on the use based on extraordinary evidence justifying why such excessive force is need. Once a warrant is acquired, do police have carte blanche to exercise it as they see fit?
- maxerickson 12y ago
  A judge would have signed off on this raid and was probably reasonably aware of the tactics they were likely to employ.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    This is an interesting point, and depending on the jurisdiction, some judges are elected officials. It should come back on the judge that he or she authorized this abuse of power. Unfortunately, the feedback loop between the (hypothetical) judicial backstop on the system and the enforcers of the law tends to be left open by ignorance. It would be good for local political activists in Atlanta to make sure that the judge who authorized this warrant has a significantly curtailed career.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      OK, but the judge can only go by the evidence s/he is presented with. This judge might have been rubber-stamping SWAT raid applications, or might have been given sufficient evidence to think there was a serious risk of a firefight.
      - malandrew 12y ago
        Are judges required to make a statement on each warrant justifying their decision to grant a warrant given the information presented, or is it basically just a signature. I would hope that signing off on a warrant requires more rigor than a mere signature. How adversarial is the warrant granting process. Is it common for warrants asked for to be granted by default, or is there an adversarial process in place that forces the police/detectives to go back and do more investigative work if they don't provide enough substantive evidence to justify a warrant being granted. Furthermore, is warrant-granting by judges a matter of the public record. i.e. Can I go somewhere to lookup how many warrants a particular judge has granted, how many they have denied, and how many that were denied were eventually granted and the average number of resubmissions required to get those that were initially denied approved?
      - fixermark 12y ago
        Sure, but elected positions do not work that way. ;) Sometimes you make a bad choice based on circumstances that were partially outside of your control. An elected judge being overthrown for that reason may make their successor either more willing to question or less willing to take the police's evidence as sufficient.
  - baddox 12y ago
    The judge likely knew that his or her job is heavily contingent on his or her willingness to sign off on raids like this.
- simplemath 12y ago
  >If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make You're right -it was appallingly easy for them to decide that they can do as they please. Given the prison/police/military industrial complex fueling our massive, unprecedented in world history, Third Estate and the utter lack of any meaningful political opposition to it, things will get worse before they get better.
simplemath 12y ago
Hate to be so basic but when you've decided to be a hammer, everything eventually looks like a nail. All of this military surplus gear thats been avalanching into local PDs nationwide isn't going to just collect dust. The good ol' boys in blue will eventually find a reason to use their toys, whether its on you, me, or the family in the OP. Since 'Protect and Serve' has been officially declared false by our wonderful Supreme Court, everyone in this country should disabuse themselves of the notion that the police are here to help us and keep the peace. BRB blasting NWA
- jrs235 12y ago
  The problem is most people think/thought the police are there to "protect and serve" them (the people/individuals) when they are not. The police are there to protect and serve the government. ADD: The government is SUPPOSE to protect and serve the people.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants. // Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. As in this case where apparently there was an AK47 in the house.
- jordan0day 12y ago
  > Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. That certainly happens. According to http://www.odmp.org/search/year http://www.odmp.org/search/year, 30 American police officers were killed by gunfire (not-accidental) in 2013. However, like most things, what's more important is how often it occurs. It turns out that there's somewhere between 750,000-800,000 police officers in the USA, so on the high end, that's 4 gunfire-related deaths per 100,000 officers. Compare that to jobs like fishing (127 per 100,000), roofing (34 per 100,000), and farming (26 per 100,000) (source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dangerous-jobs-us-9.aspx http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dan...), being shot to death as a police officer doesn't seem especially likely. (Admittedly, gunfire-related deaths don't represent a majority of officer deaths in a given year, it seems, but gunfire is the main justification behind police militarization) Edit: To put it another way, being a police officer is 2.5 times safer (gunfire-wise, at least), than driving a car.
- aidenn0 12y ago
  What's odd about there being a rifle in the house? In many places owning rifles is fairly normal.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    There's nothing especially odd about it, there are lots of non-violent reasons to have an automatic assault rifle in an urban environment. /s The point is that trying to arrest a drug dealer who has an assault rifle provides more potential for being shot than trying to arrest one that does not. To mitigate the chance of being seriously injured the police tool up in order that they might, if not strike before they are hurt, respond with appropriate force to a violent attempt to evade arrest.
aestra 12y ago
Saw this the other day http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/police-state/the-reason-you-separate-the-military-and-the-police/#sthash.T5JIZg4D.dpbs http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/police-state/th...

malandrew 12y ago

Is this enough to be able to challenge the constitutionality out of SWAT team usage and no-knock warrants, based on the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. For example, in this case, the police were looking for one individual and found a family inside. Shouldn't the police treat them all as innocent instead of enemy combatants until they've positively identified the suspect? If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make since hazards are part of the job they have chosen to perform. Using SWAT teams externalizes the risk and danger of the job. IMHO, it should be a high bar to meet to justify the use of SWAT teams in any situation. A judge should have to sign off on the use based on extraordinary evidence justifying why such excessive force is need. Once a warrant is acquired, do police have carte blanche to exercise it as they see fit?

maxerickson 12y ago
A judge would have signed off on this raid and was probably reasonably aware of the tactics they were likely to employ.
- fixermark 12y ago
  This is an interesting point, and depending on the jurisdiction, some judges are elected officials. It should come back on the judge that he or she authorized this abuse of power. Unfortunately, the feedback loop between the (hypothetical) judicial backstop on the system and the enforcers of the law tends to be left open by ignorance. It would be good for local political activists in Atlanta to make sure that the judge who authorized this warrant has a significantly curtailed career.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    OK, but the judge can only go by the evidence s/he is presented with. This judge might have been rubber-stamping SWAT raid applications, or might have been given sufficient evidence to think there was a serious risk of a firefight.
    - malandrew 12y ago
      Are judges required to make a statement on each warrant justifying their decision to grant a warrant given the information presented, or is it basically just a signature. I would hope that signing off on a warrant requires more rigor than a mere signature. How adversarial is the warrant granting process. Is it common for warrants asked for to be granted by default, or is there an adversarial process in place that forces the police/detectives to go back and do more investigative work if they don't provide enough substantive evidence to justify a warrant being granted. Furthermore, is warrant-granting by judges a matter of the public record. i.e. Can I go somewhere to lookup how many warrants a particular judge has granted, how many they have denied, and how many that were denied were eventually granted and the average number of resubmissions required to get those that were initially denied approved?
    - fixermark 12y ago
      Sure, but elected positions do not work that way. ;) Sometimes you make a bad choice based on circumstances that were partially outside of your control. An elected judge being overthrown for that reason may make their successor either more willing to question or less willing to take the police's evidence as sufficient.
- baddox 12y ago
  The judge likely knew that his or her job is heavily contingent on his or her willingness to sign off on raids like this.
simplemath 12y ago
>If we have to err between the safety of the public and the safety of police officers, that's an easy decision to make You're right -it was appallingly easy for them to decide that they can do as they please. Given the prison/police/military industrial complex fueling our massive, unprecedented in world history, Third Estate and the utter lack of any meaningful political opposition to it, things will get worse before they get better.

simplemath 12y ago

Hate to be so basic but when you've decided to be a hammer, everything eventually looks like a nail. All of this military surplus gear thats been avalanching into local PDs nationwide isn't going to just collect dust. The good ol' boys in blue will eventually find a reason to use their toys, whether its on you, me, or the family in the OP. Since 'Protect and Serve' has been officially declared false by our wonderful Supreme Court, everyone in this country should disabuse themselves of the notion that the police are here to help us and keep the peace. BRB blasting NWA

jrs235 12y ago
The problem is most people think/thought the police are there to "protect and serve" them (the people/individuals) when they are not. The police are there to protect and serve the government. ADD: The government is SUPPOSE to protect and serve the people.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>Police tend to treat suspects (and those around them) not as law-breaking citizens, but as enemy combatants. // Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. As in this case where apparently there was an AK47 in the house.

jordan0day 12y ago
> Isn't that at least partly because they arm themselves as if they were enemy combatants and treat the police as such. That certainly happens. According to http://www.odmp.org/search/year http://www.odmp.org/search/year, 30 American police officers were killed by gunfire (not-accidental) in 2013. However, like most things, what's more important is how often it occurs. It turns out that there's somewhere between 750,000-800,000 police officers in the USA, so on the high end, that's 4 gunfire-related deaths per 100,000 officers. Compare that to jobs like fishing (127 per 100,000), roofing (34 per 100,000), and farming (26 per 100,000) (source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dangerous-jobs-us-9.aspx http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-most-dan...), being shot to death as a police officer doesn't seem especially likely. (Admittedly, gunfire-related deaths don't represent a majority of officer deaths in a given year, it seems, but gunfire is the main justification behind police militarization) Edit: To put it another way, being a police officer is 2.5 times safer (gunfire-wise, at least), than driving a car.
aidenn0 12y ago
What's odd about there being a rifle in the house? In many places owning rifles is fairly normal.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  There's nothing especially odd about it, there are lots of non-violent reasons to have an automatic assault rifle in an urban environment. /s The point is that trying to arrest a drug dealer who has an assault rifle provides more potential for being shot than trying to arrest one that does not. To mitigate the chance of being seriously injured the police tool up in order that they might, if not strike before they are hurt, respond with appropriate force to a violent attempt to evade arrest.

aestra 12y ago

Saw this the other day http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/police-state/the-reason-you-separate-the-military-and-the-police/#sthash.T5JIZg4D.dpbs http://alibertarianfuture.com/big-government/police-state/th...