[Infowarrior] - Paper: SWAT Abuses

[Richard Forno]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf

Americans have long maintained that a man¹s home is his castle and that he
has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortun- ately, that
right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a
disturbing mili- tarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a
dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most
commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for rou- tine police
work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics
warrants, usual- ly with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are
needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly
targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they¹re
sleeping, usu- ally by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not
as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence
and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of
only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly
target the wrong residence. And they have result- ed in dozens of needless
deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police
officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects. This paper presents a
history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an
extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations
for reform. 

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http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf