Some police state bootlickers have robes. Earlier this month, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an appalling decision in a lawsuit stemming from a fatal 2005 drug raid in Maryland. In fact, the opinion encapsulates everything that’s wrong with sending militarized police barreling into homes to serve ... MORE
Showing posts with label raids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raids. Show all posts
Radley Balko: Absurd Fourth Circuit Ruling Embodies Everything That’s Wrong With SWAT Drug Raids
Some police state bootlickers have robes. Earlier this month, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an appalling decision in a lawsuit stemming from a fatal 2005 drug raid in Maryland. In fact, the opinion encapsulates everything that’s wrong with sending militarized police barreling into homes to serve ... MORERadley Balko: Another Day, Another Drug War Fatality
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Pot suspect shot in the face by cops in his own home. Meet Derek Cruice, your latest collateral damage in the drug war:A
deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a
narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County
Sheriff’s Office. Investigators said deputies were entering the
home on Maybrook ... MOREPolice State Update: Did SWAT Burn A Man Alive?
from the Antelope Valley Times. A convicted felon, whose body was found after a SWAT team fired in tear gas into a Lancaster home, and a fire broke out, was publicly identified Saturday by the Coroner’s Office. The man was identified as Michael Leroy Soares, 35, of Lancaster, said Coroner’s Lt. David Smith. It was still not clear how he died, ... MOREPolice Union: Don't Mess With No-Knock Warrants
by Bernard Watson. Carrie Mills is a retired Atlanta Police officer with 30 years on the job - primarily in APD's drug unit. Mills is now a union rep for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers. She considers herself an expert on search warrants, particularly no knock warrants, which allows officers to enter a structure without knocking first. Mills says ... MORERadley Balko: The Flashbang Menace
Officer safety always trumps citizen safety. ProPublica has just published a long investigation of the use of flashbang grenades, an issue I’ve written about quite a bit, including here at The Watch. These
are the incendiary devices intended to temporarily stun, blind and
deafen everyone within range. They have some limited appropriate ... MORE
SWAT Kills Man In ‘Drug Raid’ That Finds $2 Of Marijuana
One less pot smoker, America is safe! Original story. Jason Westcott had no criminal record to speak of, and yet he died in a SWAT “drug raid” on his house which yielded only $2.00 in marijuana. It all started when a confidential informant lied to police about Westcott. That informant, who approached the Tampa Bay Times in July using ... MOREJohn W. Whitehead: Welcome To The Matrix
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Enslaved by technology and the Internet of things. If ever Americans sell their birthright, it will be for the promise of expediency and comfort delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and ... MOREJohn W. Whitehead : You’re Either a Cop or Little People
A bad year for the little people. For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and ... MORERadley Balko: A Drug Informant Lies, An Innocent Man Dies
When home invaders are from the government. Back in July, we looked at the case of Jason Wescott, a Florida man shot and killed by a police SWAT team during a drug raid over an alleged sale of $200 worth of pot to a police informant. The tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that according to friends and relatives, Wescott had been ... MOREChris Cassidy: The High Cost Of Drug War Mistakes
Wrongful death suit results from botched SWAT raid. A federal wrongful death suit against a Framingham police officer who accidentally shot to death an unarmed elderly man during a SWAT raid in 2011 was allowed to continue by a judge yesterday. U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV ruled that the constitutional rights of Eurie ... MOREThe Trials of Growing Up in a Police State
by John W. Whitehead. After a year dominated with news of police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry, photo ops of militarized police shouldering assault rifles while perched on top of armored vehicles, and reports on how the police are using asset forfeiture laws to pad their pockets with luxury cars, ... MOREAre ‘We The People’ Useful Idiots In The Digital Age?
by John W. Whitehead. Is this really a government of consent? “Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?” In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and ... MORETravis Gettys: Police Expert Says War On Terror Turned Our Cops Into Occupying Armies — And We’re The Enemy
Terrorists and politicians morph liberty to slavery. The war on terror has essentially turned police into occupying armies in some American communities, said a police and criminology expert. Thomas Nolan, an associate professor of criminology at Merrimack College and former senior policy analyst with the Department of Homeland ... MOREJim Hightower: Rabid Florida Police SWAT At Barbers
Barney Fifes on steroids. When it comes to policing an area, the good people of Orange Country,
Florida are lucky, because they’ve got the astonishing law-enforcement
team of DBPR and OCSO on the beat, eager to stop any possible criminal
activity. Consider just one example of the truly-incredible vigilance of
this dynamic policing duo. ... MOREHow To Serve A Warrant: 1972 Versus Today
by Lt. Harry Thomas. This past week I was over on Officer.com trying to convince some hot-headed, patriot-hating young cops that the Constitution is actually the law of the land. I failed. One of them refers to open carriers as “attention whores.” I was denounced as a traitor to law enforcement for insisting that gun owners actually have rights ... MOREJoshua D. Filler: Time To Call In SWAT Team Reform Crew
Excessive force by cops becoming widely recognized. In February 2013, an armored vehicle and a special weapons and tactics
(SWAT) team funded in part by a Department of Homeland Security grant
were deployed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department during
the manhunt for domestic terrorist Christopher Dorner.
Dorner ... MORECops Do 20,000 No-Knock Raids Against Citizens Each Year
by Dara Lind. Most of the time, when a person kills an intruder who breaks into his home, dressed in all black and screaming, the homeowner will avoid jail time. But what happens when the break-in was a no-knock SWAT raid, the intruder was a police officer, and the homeowner has a record? A recent pair of cases in Texas are an example of how ... MORE
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