Battleangel

On the militarization of police departments across the US (via Metafilter). One may not always agree with the material published by the CATO institute, but this is an alarming development for any nation, especially one that is already unhinged and by many accounts balancing on the edge of fascism.

Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization 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 routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually 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 they’re sleeping, usually 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 resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

Radley Balko is careful not to point any fingers other than to suggest that the policy over the last decades has been detrimental overall and that the “get tough” approach (especially on drugs) doesn’t have the intended effect. One could have wished for a causal study perhaps between America’s foreign “endeavors” and the militarization at home. Not to mention the recruiting policies of the police forces. But that seems to be beyond the scope of this inquiry. Far be it for anyone to actually criticise the US in any deep and meaningful fashion. If Balko had produced any substantial causal suggestions that may have tarnished America’s good name and image, he would have most likely been cut loose from CATO.
Note also how Balko’s introduction brings up concealed-carry permits and how people should be trusted and how he delicately declines to comment on gun ownership as such, which CATO no doubt considers part of their individual liberty dogma (and about the only thing in the entire constitution that those illiterate Americans know by heart).

Related: ‘Knock and announce’ search warrants going out the window