7 ms·

I'm struggling to understand how any of the officers on the SWAT team - or, for that matter, those who formulated the policies to use tools like M-16s and flash

I'm struggling to understand how any of the officers on the SWAT team - or, for that matter, those who formulated the policies to use tools like M-16s and flash grenades in drug raids - could possibly consider their actions to be less serious than someone taking or dealing in drugs.

fit2rule 12y ago
Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous. But so too are these kinds of reactions from the police. Its really as if the public are caught in the middle of two horrific forces, being created on both ends of the playing field. The question is: who profits? The cold hard answer, which nobody wants to admit is this: the dealers of drugs, and the dealers of weapons. Oftentimes, the same damn groups.
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  Your stakeholder analysis is not complete. Cops profit. Lawyers profit. DAs profit. Tough-on-crime politicians profit. Religions profit. Government profits. Political parties profit. Basically, the whole establishment profits from maintaining status quo in the drug war.
- pachydermic 12y ago
  Police departments profit as well. They are able to confiscate all kinds of "evidence" like the car a dealer uses when they're selling drugs and then auction those items off. It's an extremely perverse incentive which must be eliminated. More info: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america... Well, here's the most relevant quote, anyways: """ Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly claim was the proceeds of a crime. Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime. If the police find drugs in his house, they can take his cash and possibly the house, too. He must sue to get them back. Many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their budgets. In 1986, its first year of operation, the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund held $93.7m. By 2012, that and the related Seized Asset Deposit Fund held nearly $6 billion. Mr Balko contends that these forfeiture laws are “unfair on a very basic level”. They “disproportionately affect low-income people” and provide a perverse incentive for police to focus on drug-related crimes, which “come with a potential kickback to the police department”, rather than rape and murder investigations, which do not. They also provide an incentive to arrest suspected drug-dealers inside their houses, which can be seized, and to bust stash houses after most of their drugs have been sold, when police can seize the cash. """
- hvs 12y ago
  And they only exist because the product they distribute has been made illegal.
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    In event of drug legalization, they could still exist to circumvent taxes. Cigarette smuggling is still a thing.
- peterkelly 12y ago
  > Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous. This is really my main concern with the "war on drugs". Keeping the drug trade illegal doesn't get rid of it - rather, it just pushes it underground. The result is organised crime, violence, and so many other major problems. Admittedly, I'm very far removed from the situation, but I find it difficult to imagine that there'd be so much of these problems if you could just walk into a store and buy your drug of choice in the same way that you buy cigarettes or alcohol. You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics.
  - aestra 12y ago
    >You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics. However, they are starting to get into the trade of fake food. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-criminal-gangs-move-from-drugs-to-a-new-underground-economy-9147486.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-c... http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gangs-have-growing-appetite-food-crime-la-cartel http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gan... https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758-trends-in-organized-crime-counterfeiting-food https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758...
- rosser 12y ago
  Drug cartels and drug slavery are utterly orthogonal to what amounts to misdemeanor possession, which is essentially what many of these cases (including, for all I know, this one) amount to. Should the SWAT team be able to toss a flashbang into your child's crib because you have a dime bag in the nightstand?
frandroid 12y ago
The drug war is a race war. It has little to do with drugs. They're not going after white coke/pot users/dealers very much, are they?
- silverbax88 12y ago
  Race has nothing to do with it. Lots of meth labs getting busted in rural America are run by white dealers.
  - milesskorpen 12y ago
    You really can't say it has "nothing to do with it." Just look at the sentencing guidelines between crack and coke. Listen to the original hearings from when pot was made illegal. Look at the proportion of people in prison for pot (hint: It doesn't reflect the racial make-up of users). Yes — in some parts of the country the disparity is based more on class than race. But that's definitely not the whole story.
  - mullingitover 12y ago
    White people get arrested sometimes. That doesn't mean that the war on drugs doesn't have a race discrepancy problem[1]. [1] http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime09.htm http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime09.htm
    - silverbax88 12y ago
      You guys are killing me. I'm Mexican-American. I grew up an an urban U.S. city where many of my neighborhood pals ended up 'locked up or covered up'. I have a pretty good understanding of race and the 'war on drugs.'
  - scarmig 12y ago
    Race isn't everything, but it's ridiculous to pretend that race hasn't substantially influenced the drug war. Even aside from the highly unbalanced prosecution and conviction of drug offenders depending on race, race colors everything in the drug war: look at the history of marijuana [0], for instance, or crack cocaine sentencing practices. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the-mysterious-history-of-marijuana http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the...
rayiner 12y ago
You're missing the social context here. First, this is never about using it's about dealing. Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking. Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes. Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present. Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods. This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.
- angersock 12y ago
  If only we spent the money on schools and social programs instead of prisons and SWAT teams!
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Atlanta spends over $15,000 per pupil per year on schools, 50% over the OECD average, and about as much as Switzerland (although, adjusted for PPP Atlanta still spends much more than Switzerland).
clarkmoody 12y ago
I think the mentality among the police is "I'm going home tonight, no matter what." Given the opportunity to wear body armor and carry a rifle when confronting a perceived threat, many will take it.
- danielweber 12y ago
  They also have the opportunity to not enter the house. There is a reason that burglary is dangerous: it invites a confrontation that doesn't have to exist. I'm not so starry-eyed as to imagine that the cops never need to enter a house forcefully. But they can make this happen at a time and means of their choosing. They can watch to determine how many people are in the house. They can wait for some suspects to leave and detain them individually. It's easy for me to second-guess from here. But the time to think through all these things is before you go into the house.
  - clarkmoody 12y ago
    Well sure, but the policy as it stands is to send SWAT into the house in the dead of night. Obviously, we need some sort of policy change. My comments speculate upon the mindset of those involved in these raids regarding their choice of weapons and gear. They know they are going into a house, that much is given.
  - Joeri 12y ago
    I once observed the cops break down a door. They knocked first, several times, loudly, and warned they would enter the house by force, before busting open the door. No grenades or guns were involved. That seems like the right kind of caution when violating a person's home. Yes, sure, in a drug raid that leaves time for flushing things down the toilet, but to me that seems like a reasonable trade-off.
- kika 12y ago
  You're essentially saying that the only way to stop this is to use an excessive force in return.
  - 12y ago
jeroen94704 12y ago
That, exactly. And I simply cannot fathom how the response to a flash-bang grenade in a cot with a child in it can ever be "well, obviously there was no way for us to know there were children, so don't blame us" instead of "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE WE'RE SO SORRY!"
- rqebmm 12y ago
  lawsuits, that's how.
  - jeroen94704 12y ago
    Yeah, sadly enough.
baddox 12y ago
That part is really simply: they're being paid to perform precisely these actions.

fit2rule 12y ago

Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous. But so too are these kinds of reactions from the police. Its really as if the public are caught in the middle of two horrific forces, being created on both ends of the playing field. The question is: who profits? The cold hard answer, which nobody wants to admit is this: the dealers of drugs, and the dealers of weapons. Oftentimes, the same damn groups.

vdaniuk 12y ago
Your stakeholder analysis is not complete. Cops profit. Lawyers profit. DAs profit. Tough-on-crime politicians profit. Religions profit. Government profits. Political parties profit. Basically, the whole establishment profits from maintaining status quo in the drug war.
pachydermic 12y ago
Police departments profit as well. They are able to confiscate all kinds of "evidence" like the car a dealer uses when they're selling drugs and then auction those items off. It's an extremely perverse incentive which must be eliminated. More info: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america... Well, here's the most relevant quote, anyways: """ Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly claim was the proceeds of a crime. Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime. If the police find drugs in his house, they can take his cash and possibly the house, too. He must sue to get them back. Many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their budgets. In 1986, its first year of operation, the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund held $93.7m. By 2012, that and the related Seized Asset Deposit Fund held nearly $6 billion. Mr Balko contends that these forfeiture laws are “unfair on a very basic level”. They “disproportionately affect low-income people” and provide a perverse incentive for police to focus on drug-related crimes, which “come with a potential kickback to the police department”, rather than rape and murder investigations, which do not. They also provide an incentive to arrest suspected drug-dealers inside their houses, which can be seized, and to bust stash houses after most of their drugs have been sold, when police can seize the cash. """
hvs 12y ago
And they only exist because the product they distribute has been made illegal.
- joshuapants 12y ago
  In event of drug legalization, they could still exist to circumvent taxes. Cigarette smuggling is still a thing.
peterkelly 12y ago
> Maybe there needs to be more publicity about drug gangs and the slaves created by the drug cartels. They exist, and they are heinous. This is really my main concern with the "war on drugs". Keeping the drug trade illegal doesn't get rid of it - rather, it just pushes it underground. The result is organised crime, violence, and so many other major problems. Admittedly, I'm very far removed from the situation, but I find it difficult to imagine that there'd be so much of these problems if you could just walk into a store and buy your drug of choice in the same way that you buy cigarettes or alcohol. You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics.
- aestra 12y ago
  >You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics. However, they are starting to get into the trade of fake food. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-criminal-gangs-move-from-drugs-to-a-new-underground-economy-9147486.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-c... http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gangs-have-growing-appetite-food-crime-la-cartel http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gan... https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758-trends-in-organized-crime-counterfeiting-food https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758...
rosser 12y ago
Drug cartels and drug slavery are utterly orthogonal to what amounts to misdemeanor possession, which is essentially what many of these cases (including, for all I know, this one) amount to. Should the SWAT team be able to toss a flashbang into your child's crib because you have a dime bag in the nightstand?

frandroid 12y ago

The drug war is a race war. It has little to do with drugs. They're not going after white coke/pot users/dealers very much, are they?

silverbax88 12y ago
Race has nothing to do with it. Lots of meth labs getting busted in rural America are run by white dealers.
- milesskorpen 12y ago
  You really can't say it has "nothing to do with it." Just look at the sentencing guidelines between crack and coke. Listen to the original hearings from when pot was made illegal. Look at the proportion of people in prison for pot (hint: It doesn't reflect the racial make-up of users). Yes — in some parts of the country the disparity is based more on class than race. But that's definitely not the whole story.
- mullingitover 12y ago
  White people get arrested sometimes. That doesn't mean that the war on drugs doesn't have a race discrepancy problem[1]. [1] http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime09.htm http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/crime09.htm
  - silverbax88 12y ago
    You guys are killing me. I'm Mexican-American. I grew up an an urban U.S. city where many of my neighborhood pals ended up 'locked up or covered up'. I have a pretty good understanding of race and the 'war on drugs.'
- scarmig 12y ago
  Race isn't everything, but it's ridiculous to pretend that race hasn't substantially influenced the drug war. Even aside from the highly unbalanced prosecution and conviction of drug offenders depending on race, race colors everything in the drug war: look at the history of marijuana [0], for instance, or crack cocaine sentencing practices. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the-mysterious-history-of-marijuana http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the...

rayiner 12y ago

You're missing the social context here. First, this is never about using it's about dealing. Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking. Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes. Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present. Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods. This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.

angersock 12y ago
If only we spent the money on schools and social programs instead of prisons and SWAT teams!
- rayiner 12y ago
  Atlanta spends over $15,000 per pupil per year on schools, 50% over the OECD average, and about as much as Switzerland (although, adjusted for PPP Atlanta still spends much more than Switzerland).

clarkmoody 12y ago

I think the mentality among the police is "I'm going home tonight, no matter what." Given the opportunity to wear body armor and carry a rifle when confronting a perceived threat, many will take it.

danielweber 12y ago
They also have the opportunity to not enter the house. There is a reason that burglary is dangerous: it invites a confrontation that doesn't have to exist. I'm not so starry-eyed as to imagine that the cops never need to enter a house forcefully. But they can make this happen at a time and means of their choosing. They can watch to determine how many people are in the house. They can wait for some suspects to leave and detain them individually. It's easy for me to second-guess from here. But the time to think through all these things is before you go into the house.
- clarkmoody 12y ago
  Well sure, but the policy as it stands is to send SWAT into the house in the dead of night. Obviously, we need some sort of policy change. My comments speculate upon the mindset of those involved in these raids regarding their choice of weapons and gear. They know they are going into a house, that much is given.
- Joeri 12y ago
  I once observed the cops break down a door. They knocked first, several times, loudly, and warned they would enter the house by force, before busting open the door. No grenades or guns were involved. That seems like the right kind of caution when violating a person's home. Yes, sure, in a drug raid that leaves time for flushing things down the toilet, but to me that seems like a reasonable trade-off.
kika 12y ago
You're essentially saying that the only way to stop this is to use an excessive force in return.
- 12y ago

jeroen94704 12y ago

That, exactly. And I simply cannot fathom how the response to a flash-bang grenade in a cot with a child in it can ever be "well, obviously there was no way for us to know there were children, so don't blame us" instead of "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE WE'RE SO SORRY!"

rqebmm 12y ago
lawsuits, that's how.
- jeroen94704 12y ago
  Yeah, sadly enough.

baddox 12y ago

That part is really simply: they're being paid to perform precisely these actions.