Another example of out of control law enforcement

[Montecresto]

Not a day goes by without another display of over the top heavy handed response to the most minor of offences. Or the same for no offence at all, like the disabled veteran thrown off the Jersey boardwalk by a belligerent cop over his seeing eye dog in a no pets allowed zone last week.


Here is their press release: At around seven thirty last Friday morning, inhabitants of The Garden of Eden, a small Intentional Community based on Sustainability, were awakened by a SWAT raid conducted by the City of Arlington for suspicion of being a full fledged marijuana growth and trafficking operation. Ultimately only a single arrest was made based on unrelated outstanding traffic violations, a handful of citations were given for city code violations, and zero drug related violations were found.

The entire operation lasted about 10 hours and involved many dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment that was involved in the “abatement” operation. Witnesses say that there were helicopters and unmanned flying drones circling the property in the days prior to the raid that are presumed to have been a part of the intelligence gathering. The combined expenses for the raid itself and the collection of information leading up to the fruitless raid are estimated in the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.


http://www.bobtuskin.com/2013/08/12/family-raided-by-swat-team-for-weeds/

 

[Dittohead not!]

Yet another skirmish fought in the war on drugs.

Winners: none.
Losers: individual liberty, as usual.

 

[Montecresto]

True. I remember back in the day when the city sued you for unaddressed code violations. Nobody REALLY believed these people were growing marijauna in their yard. Drones and helicopters were surveilling the place prior to this WAY OVER THE TOP RAID.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Not a day goes by without another display of over the top heavy handed response to the most minor of offences. Or the same for no offence at all, like the disabled veteran thrown off the Jersey boardwalk by a belligerent cop over his seeing eye dog in a no pets allowed zone last week.


Here is their press release: At around seven thirty last Friday morning, inhabitants of The Garden of Eden, a small Intentional Community based on Sustainability, were awakened by a SWAT raid conducted by the City of Arlington for suspicion of being a full fledged marijuana growth and trafficking operation. Ultimately only a single arrest was made based on unrelated outstanding traffic violations, a handful of citations were given for city code violations, and zero drug related violations were found.

The entire operation lasted about 10 hours and involved many dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment that was involved in the “abatement” operation. Witnesses say that there were helicopters and unmanned flying drones circling the property in the days prior to the raid that are presumed to have been a part of the intelligence gathering. The combined expenses for the raid itself and the collection of information leading up to the fruitless raid are estimated in the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.


Family Raided by SWAT Team for “Weeds” | BobTuskin.com

Harass those dirty hippies, that will surely teach them proper respect for the rules of society.

 

[HonestJoe]

This story only appears to have one side. Obviously the targets of a police raid (legitimate or not) are going to be unhappy about it but their statement alone doesn't automatically mean the police did anything wrong.

 

[Helix]

we shouldn't be arresting people for growing pot any more than we should be arresting people for growing tomatoes. they're both just plants that make your brain feel happy when you consume them.

 

[Montecresto]

This story only appears to have one side. Obviously the targets of a police raid (legitimate or not) are going to be unhappy about it but their statement alone doesn't automatically mean the police did anything wrong.

Are you a cop defending your own, or did you simply miss the point? The city was communicating with the residents for eight months over what they considered were city ordinance violations. Drugs were never a part of the complaint. What use to be handled in court became an issue of LE abuse. These people were raided by SWAT even though drugs were never mentioned in the cities complaint. LE flew a plane (though they deny having flown a drone) over the property in the days before the raid. Apparently the LE needs advanced training to identify the difference between lambs quarter and marijauna. A dozen LE vehicles, local police and a SWAT team handcuff the residents and hold them at gun point. If you don't view this as over the top, then I have nothing further to say to you. Apparently you have been asleep the last decade or so when it comes to the militarisation of law enforcement in America. Police now a days raid properties in full battle armour using armoured vehicles with a dozen LEO's on a regular basis for things that use to draw a squad car and two uniformed officers.


http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/08/12/5075366/weeds-but-no-weed-arlington-police.html

 

[HonestJoe]

Are you a cop defending your own, or did you simply miss the point?

I'm not a cop and I'm not defending anyone as such. I'm not a fan of this all too common generic hatred of all things law enforcement though (just as I object to generic hatred of any grouping). I have friends and family who are in the police (albeit in the UK) and they have suffered from this hatred through no fault of their own, as have I by association.

You clearly missed my point though. Your OP link was entirely one-sided - written by the targets of the raid with the specific intention to complain about it. They've obviously no interest (or ability for that matter) in presenting a balanced view of the events and could easily be inclined to exaggerate or spin-up the most negative aspects and brush over any mitigation. Despite all this, you automatically assumed that everything in it was entirely accurate and declared "law enforcement" unquestionably guilty. I was meanly pointing out that such an assumption is at best premature.

It seems to me that you're fundamentally biased against any form of law enforcement so would naturally jump to such a conclusion. I'm not going to waste my time trying to change your mind but maybe you'll think twice before jumping to extreme conclusions in the future. Failing that, maybe anyone else reading your OP will be encouraged to step back and take a breath before reacting.

 

[Montecresto]

First of all, I provided you with a link to the Ft. Worth paper that corroborates the victims story save the drone claim. Secondly, my complaint isn't generic but very specific to INCREASING HEAVY HANDED POLICE WORK. This is more prevalent in urban areas than rural areas where I live and police are still mostly civil and respectful of the public. Further in this one particular case (but certainly not all) I don't necessarily criticise the individual LEO but the general policy and practice as it is evolving for the worse and was defended by Arlingtons PC.

 

[Dittohead not!]

Personally, I think there was a very good reason to have passed amendments against illegal search and seizures, against warrantless searches, against taking property without due process, requiring trail by jury, and all of that. I don't think those reasons have gone away, and that, if we ignore the restrictions on the government, we will soon be living in a real police state.

Then, of course, we'll be safe from all of the bad guys, except for the ones who do work for the government.

 

[Paschendale]

We militarized our police force and then wonder why they attack us like an occupying army.

 

[Gaius46]

We militarized our police force and then wonder why they attack us like an occupying army.

At least where I grew up it started before the militarization of the police force. There's always been and always will be something of an us-and-them attitude with the police. Nature of the job and probably will always be.

However when I was a kid in NY and there were beat cops the police knew the people in the areas they patrolled - we knew the local beat copy by name and he knew us. Hell he came to our house for barbecues a couple of times. Can't vouch for the rest of the city but that's the way it was in my own lower middle class neighborhood.

That ended the day the NYPD went to patrolling strictly by car. All citizens became criminals or potential criminals and the police an occupying force. Only difference now is that they have the hardware to really act the part of occupiers.

 

[Gaius46]

Interesting Bruce Schneier blog post/book review apropos of this topic

Book Review: Rise of the Warrior Cop
Schneier on Security / by schneier / 2 days ago

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, by Radley Balko, PublicAffairs, 2013, 400 pages.

War as a rhetorical concept is firmly embedded in American culture. Over the past several decades, federal and local law enforcement has been enlisted in a war on crime, a war on drugs and a war on terror. These wars are more than just metaphors designed to rally public support and secure budget appropriations. They change the way we think about what the police do. Wars mean shooting first and asking questions later. Wars require military tactics and weaponry. Wars mean civilian casualties.

Over the decades, the war metaphor has resulted in drastic changes in the way the police operate. At both federal and state levels, the formerly hard line between police and military has blurred. Police are increasingly using military weaponry, employing military tactics and framing their mission using military terminology. Right now, there is a Third Amendment case -- that's the one about quartering soldiers in private homes without consent -- making its way through the courts. It involves someone who refused to allow the police to occupy his home in order to gain a "tactical advantage" against the house next-door. The police returned later, broke down his door, forced him to the floor and then arrested him for obstructing an officer. They also shot his dog with pepperball rounds. It's hard to argue with the premise of this case; police officers are acting so much like soldiers that it can be hard to tell the difference.

In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko chronicles the steady militarization of the police in the U.S. A detailed history of a dangerous trend, Mr. Balko's book tracks police militarization over the past 50 years, a period that not coincidentally corresponds with the rise of SWAT teams. First established in response to the armed riots of the late 1960s, they were originally exclusive to big cities and deployed only against heavily armed and dangerous criminals. Today SWAT teams are nothing special. They've multiplied like mushrooms. Every city has a SWAT team; 80% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people do as well. These teams are busy; in 2005 there were between 50,000 and 60,000 SWAT raids in the U.S. The tactics are pretty much what you would expect -- breaking down doors, rushing in with military weaponry, tear gas -- but the targets aren't. SWAT teams are routinely deployed against illegal poker games, businesses suspected of employing illegal immigrants and barbershops with unlicensed hair stylists.

In Prince George's County, MD, alone, SWAT teams were deployed about once a day in 2009, overwhelmingly to serve search or arrest warrants, and half of those warrants were for "misdemeanors and nonserious felonies." Much of Mr. Balko's data is approximate, because police departments don't publish data, and they uniformly oppose any attempts at transparency or oversight. But he has good Maryland data from 2009 on, because after the mayor of Berwyn Heights was mistakenly attacked and terrorized in his home by a SWAT team in 2008, the state passed a law requiring police to report quarterly on their use of SWAT teams: how many times, for what purposes and whether any shots were fired during the raids.

Besides documenting policy decisions at the federal and state levels, the author examines the influence of military contractors who have looked to expand into new markets. And he tells some pretty horrific stories of SWAT raids gone wrong. A lot of dogs get shot in the book. Most interesting are the changing attitudes of police. As the stories progress from the 1960s to the 2000s, we see police shift from being uncomfortable with military weapons and tactics -- and deploying them only as the very last resort in the most extreme circumstances -- to accepting and even embracing their routine use.

This development coincides with the rhetorical use of the word "war." To the police, civilians are citizens to protect. To the military, we are a population to be subdued. Wars can temporarily override the Constitution. When the Justice Department walks into Congress with requests for money and new laws to fight a war, it is going to get a different response than if it came in with a story about fighting crime. Maybe the most chilling quotation in the book is from William French Smith, President Reagan's first attorney general: "The Justice Department is not a domestic agency. It is the internal arm of national defense." Today we see that attitude in the war on terror. Because it's a war, we can arrest and imprison Americans indefinitely without charges. We can eavesdrop on the communications of all Americans without probable cause. We can assassinate American citizens without due process. We can have secret courts issuing secret rulings about secret laws. The militarization of the police is just one aspect of an increasing militarization of government.

Mr. Balko saves his prescriptions for reform until the last chapter. Two of his fixes, transparency and accountability, are good remedies for all governmental overreach. Specific to police departments, he also recommends halting mission creep, changing police culture and embracing community policing. These are far easier said than done. His final fix is ending the war on drugs, the source of much police violence. To this I would add ending the war on terror, another rhetorical war that costs us hundreds of billions of dollars, gives law enforcement powers directly prohibited by the Constitution and leaves us no safer.

This essay originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.