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> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.” Disgusting. Th

by girvo 12y ago

> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.” Disgusting. The militarisation of police is a blight on our societies progress. And now where I live is succumbing to it too, albeit far more slowly than what those in the US have to deal with. The fact that SWAT teams are using flash bangs and automatic weaponry to raid a woman's house for selling beer without a license blows my mind. > Department officers testified that their general SWAT training included work with flashbangs even though it wasn’t formally recorded in department training logs. In other words, they're lying to cover their asses again. Like police have never done that before. Disgusting.

aswanson 12y ago
And yet, American citizenry at large and the justice system in general gives the police the benefit of the doubt in all matters versus the populace. Are we really that dumb as a country? If you have to ask...
- sukilot 12y ago
  As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society (more in some really bad areas, less in others). So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. The rest are either ignorant or complicit or in cognitir dissonance.
  - snsr 12y ago
    > As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society. So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. Your unsupported position is disgusting. It hurts all of us when some are beyond reproach for brutalizing and murdering the most vulnerable in our society.
    - girvo 12y ago
      It's a shame the parent is being downvoted, as I read it they're not condoning that reaction, merely commenting on it. And they're right: that's exactly how the masses react to things like this. I wish more people reacted like you did, and I want to help build a world where that's the case.
Retra 12y ago
That's either a lie, or just poor record-keeping. I would find the poor record-keeping entirely believable, but besides the point: even if they _had_ been trained to use flashbangs, then they we not trained properly or the shouldn't have been used at all. Just because something is standard procedure doesn't make it the correct procedure.
- sseveran 12y ago
  Next time the IRS calls I will just tell them not worry, "It was just poor record keeping."
- girvo 12y ago
  I'd be more inclined to believe it was poor record keeping if there wasn't a decades long history of police lying to cover for each other. Fool me a thousand times...
  - Retra 12y ago
    I'd be worried about confirmation bias on that front. You don't remember all the times they told the truth but just did a poor job. It sounds like a lie either way. But in my experience in the military, record-keeping is boring and routine, so there is a tendency to just pump out sub-standard paperwork and say "nobody is really going to look at it anyway, and if they do, they already know it's not reliable." Training records? Pah. I'm surprised they even have training records. It's probably just a speedily-drafted form with a signature line on it. That's how you train 45 people at once: you make one form, have them all sign it, then you do the training. The form isn't accurate? Who cares, you got the signature and 'did your job'.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.” The thing that disgusts me the most is not the fact she received a wallet. The cop seems to think (or at least avert the question) that the warrant was the problem. The journalist doesn't mention this because this comment is just so clearly ridiculous that his silence is probably more powerful than to point out the obvious. I will, in any case. The issue is that you can have a warrant for Osama Bin Laden, and you can have a warrant for an elderly lady who sells some home made food without a license to scrape by. And for the latter you just don't throw a freaking explosive into her home. It's ridiculous. What, was she going to take her Samurai Sword and invisibility cloak and go on a murderous rampage? This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud. You literally could have knocked on the door like any of her customers buying food and told her to come to the station. Yet they treat her home like a siege in a game of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
- brazzy 12y ago
  > This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud. Ah, but don't the second amendement defenders keep reminding everyone that guns are the "great equalizer" that allows elderly ladies to be just as dangerous as a 250lbs steroid addict? This is the logical conclusion: the police treat every arrest like a battlefield operation because it could conceivably turn out to be exactly that.
  - mod 12y ago
    Maybe they could have come to the logical conclusion that the best way to arrest this woman would be to approach her while she's selling her illegal things again, in the same manner as the first time. Maybe in plainclothes again. They didn't seem so worried about it during the buy operation.
  - jrmurad 12y ago
    Logical conclusion? So you believe, in the absence of the 2nd Amendment (which allows law-abiding citizens to arm themselves), police executing warrants against suspected law-breaking criminals can safely assume that their targets wouldn't possibly be in violation of gun control regulations?

by girvo 12y ago

aswanson 12y ago

And yet, American citizenry at large and the justice system in general gives the police the benefit of the doubt in all matters versus the populace. Are we really that dumb as a country? If you have to ask...

sukilot 12y ago
As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society (more in some really bad areas, less in others). So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. The rest are either ignorant or complicit or in cognitir dissonance.
- snsr 12y ago
  > As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society. So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. Your unsupported position is disgusting. It hurts all of us when some are beyond reproach for brutalizing and murdering the most vulnerable in our society.
  - girvo 12y ago
    It's a shame the parent is being downvoted, as I read it they're not condoning that reaction, merely commenting on it. And they're right: that's exactly how the masses react to things like this. I wish more people reacted like you did, and I want to help build a world where that's the case.

Retra 12y ago

That's either a lie, or just poor record-keeping. I would find the poor record-keeping entirely believable, but besides the point: even if they _had_ been trained to use flashbangs, then they we not trained properly or the shouldn't have been used at all. Just because something is standard procedure doesn't make it the correct procedure.

sseveran 12y ago
Next time the IRS calls I will just tell them not worry, "It was just poor record keeping."
girvo 12y ago
I'd be more inclined to believe it was poor record keeping if there wasn't a decades long history of police lying to cover for each other. Fool me a thousand times...
- Retra 12y ago
  I'd be worried about confirmation bias on that front. You don't remember all the times they told the truth but just did a poor job. It sounds like a lie either way. But in my experience in the military, record-keeping is boring and routine, so there is a tendency to just pump out sub-standard paperwork and say "nobody is really going to look at it anyway, and if they do, they already know it's not reliable." Training records? Pah. I'm surprised they even have training records. It's probably just a speedily-drafted form with a signature line on it. That's how you train 45 people at once: you make one form, have them all sign it, then you do the training. The form isn't accurate? Who cares, you got the signature and 'did your job'.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago

> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.” The thing that disgusts me the most is not the fact she received a wallet. The cop seems to think (or at least avert the question) that the warrant was the problem. The journalist doesn't mention this because this comment is just so clearly ridiculous that his silence is probably more powerful than to point out the obvious. I will, in any case. The issue is that you can have a warrant for Osama Bin Laden, and you can have a warrant for an elderly lady who sells some home made food without a license to scrape by. And for the latter you just don't throw a freaking explosive into her home. It's ridiculous. What, was she going to take her Samurai Sword and invisibility cloak and go on a murderous rampage? This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud. You literally could have knocked on the door like any of her customers buying food and told her to come to the station. Yet they treat her home like a siege in a game of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

brazzy 12y ago
> This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud. Ah, but don't the second amendement defenders keep reminding everyone that guns are the "great equalizer" that allows elderly ladies to be just as dangerous as a 250lbs steroid addict? This is the logical conclusion: the police treat every arrest like a battlefield operation because it could conceivably turn out to be exactly that.
- mod 12y ago
  Maybe they could have come to the logical conclusion that the best way to arrest this woman would be to approach her while she's selling her illegal things again, in the same manner as the first time. Maybe in plainclothes again. They didn't seem so worried about it during the buy operation.
- jrmurad 12y ago
  Logical conclusion? So you believe, in the absence of the 2nd Amendment (which allows law-abiding citizens to arm themselves), police executing warrants against suspected law-breaking criminals can safely assume that their targets wouldn't possibly be in violation of gun control regulations?