ACLU Report on Militarized Policing: SWAT Team Deployments, Federal Programs Foster Warrior Mentalit

[WillyT]

ACLU Report on Militarized Policing: SWAT Team Deployments, Federal Programs Foster Warrior Mentality
By: Kevin Gosztola - FDL
Tuesday June 24, 2014 11:45 am


Police in South Carolina pose with a BearCat (from ACLU’s report on police militarization)

<snip>

The American Civil Liberties Union has released a report on the militarization of local law enforcement in the United States, which shows how the vast majority of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team deployments are for executing search warrants for drugs and the federal government is incentivizing the use of military-grade weaponry.

A statistical analysis [PDF] of around 800 SWAT deployments from 2011-2012 and conducted by 20 law enforcement agencies formed the basis for most of the report. It found that, even though SWAT teams originally created to handle hostage and emergency situations, 79% of incidents the ACLU studied involved a SWAT team being deployed to conduct a search of a person’s home. More than 60% of the incidents examined involved a search for drugs.

“Of the incidents studied in which SWAT was deployed to search for drugs in a person’s home, the SWAT teams either forced or probably forced entry into a person’s home using a battering ram or other breaching device 65 percent of the time,” according to the ACLU’s report. “For drug investigations, the SWAT teams studied were almost twice as likely to force entry into a person’s home than not, and they were more than twice as likely to use forced entry in drug investigations than in other cases.”

The use of tactical weapons in drug searches primarily impacts people of color. Increasingly, SWAT teams are being deployed to engage in violent tactics when children are present.

For example, in 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones was killed just after midnight when a SWAT team threw a flashbang grenade into the living room where she was sleeping. The grenade burned her blanket and a member of the SWAT team burst into the home, fired a single shot and killed her.

More recently, in May 2014, a toddler in Atlanta, Georgia, “a team of SWAT officers armed with assault rifles burst into the room where the family was sleeping. Some of the kids’ toys were in the front yard, but the Habersham County and Cornelia police officers claimed they had no way of knowing children might be present. One of the officers threw a flashbang grenade into the room.”

The grenade gave 19-month-old Bou Bou third-degree burns, and he was placed into a medically-induced coma. The blast wounded him so severely that a hole in his chest exposed his ribs...

<snip>

More: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/06/24/aclu-report-on-militarized-policing-swat-team-deployments-federal-programs-foster-warrior-mentality/

ACLU Report (.pdf file): https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf

[Earth_First]

1. Glad to see this posted...

I recently posted one of their PSA announcements with a link to their militarization of the War on Drugs.

Kudos for the OP, Willy...

[WillyT]

2. Anytime... Earth_First, Anytime...

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, WillyT.

[WillyT]

5. Those Two Kids... I'm Sick With Rage...

Thanks Uncle Joe...

[Uncle Joe]

7. I hear you, brother.

It's tragically ridiculous.

[Mnemosyne]

4. It started under Raygun. Those checkpoints were not challenged enough. If you are

not doing anything obviously wrong, ie: swerving around the road, driving with lights out - you should be left the hell alone. Period.

[NutmegYankee]

6. Thanks for posting this!

I've included a blog from WAPO that I read at lunch.

New ACLU report takes a snapshot of police militarization in the United States

The American Civil Liberties Union has released the results of its year-long study of police militarization. The study looked at 800 deployments of SWAT teams among 20 local, state and federal police agencies in 2011-2012. Among the notable findings:

62 percent of the SWAT raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs.
Just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant, meaning eight in 10 SWAT raids were not initiated to apprehend a school shooter, hostage taker, or escaped felon (the common justification for these tactics), but to investigate someone still only suspected of committing a crime.
In fact, just 7 percent of SWAT raids were “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”
In at least 36 percent of the SWAT raids studies, no contraband of any kind was found. The report notes that due to incomplete police reports on these raids this figure could be as high as 65 percent.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/06/24/new-aclu-report-takes-a-snapshot-of-police-militarization-in-the-united-states/?hpid=z3

[WillyT]

8. Thank You For That... The More Exposure, The Better...

[NutmegYankee]

9. Indeed. I've been following this for quite a while.

[Mojorabbit]

10. k&r nt

[pscot]

11. We need law to spell out

when it's ok to use tactics like this, i.e., essentially never.

[hootinholler]

12. If you can rec it, you can kick it

Thanks Willy!

[WillyT]

13. Anytime... hootinholler, Anytime...

[pscot]

14. Swat team kills 95 yar old vet

Looks like this happened a while back, but Wrana's daughter has just filed a lawsuit

Upon entering the room, defendant Taylor fired "five rounds of bean bag cartridges from a 12 gauge shotgun within a distance of approximately only six to eight feet from Mr. Wrana, far less than the distance allowed for discharging that shotgun, and, consequently, savagely wounding and killing Mr. Wrana," the lawsuit states. "Mr. Wrana bled to death as a result of the shotgun wounds inflicted upon him by defendants. The Cook County Medical Examiner ruled that Mr. Wrana's death was a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to his abdomen as a result of shots fired from a bean bag shotgun."
The bean bag cartridges travel at approximately 190 miles an hour, and the manufacturer warns that "shots to the head, neck thorax, heart or spine can result in fatal injury," according to the complaint.
After shooting Wrana, the officers handcuffed him, took photos of his injuries, and put him in a four-point restraint before transporting him to the hospital, the complaint states.
"At all relevant times, Mr. Wrana was alone in his private residence and had committed no crime by refusing to be transported to the hospital. Defendants were without lawful authority to enter his residence, and there was no immediate lawful reason to implement any police action against Mr. Wrana, including the use of police tactical intervention," according to the complaint.
Park Forest officials told the Chicago Tribune claim that Wrana brandished a knife or cane, which justified the officers' response.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/06/23/68943.htm

[WillyT]

15. Yep... Fought In WWII... For A Country That Ended Up Killing Him...

Way To Go...

If cops are scared of a 95 year old... we are all screwed.

[tblue37]

16. The Founding Fathers did not want the US taxpayers to support a standing army,

but of course we have left that restraint far behind.

As for the police: the military is not supposed to be used in law enforcement, but now the lines have become so blurred, deliberately so, that even though we call them cops, the uniformed individuals who are used to enforce domestic laws are in many places really just an occupying army. American citizens are being brutalized and oppressed by them in ways that are not all that easy to differentiate from the brutality occupying forces visit on the denizens of any occupied land.

[woo me with science]

17. K&R

[woo me with science]

18. kick

[blackspade]

19. Rage.

Cops are totally out of control.
Assaulting and murdering at will with no repercussions.

There should be community boards that review all police actions that result in violence.