More details this morning from the Washington Post.

Culosi had no weapons in his home, and had no history of violence. What’s more, police were conducting a document search. The possibility of weapons wasn’t mentioned. Yet they sent the SWAT team anyway.

Why? Well, here’s where it gets particularly troubling. Fairfax County conducts all of its search warrants with SWAT teams. Regardless of what the warrant is for, and whether there’s any reason at all to think the suspect might be dangerous.

From the Post:

Although police and firearms authorities were divided yesterday on whether SWAT teams are needed for most search warrants, as is Fairfax’s practice, they agreed on another point: Officers carrying guns should not aim directly at anyone or have their fingers on the trigger until they are absolutely ready to fire.

[...]

Fairfax police declined to discuss their tactical unit policies. But police officials acknowledged that the tactical team, using bulletproof vests, high-powered weapons and other police tools, serves nearly all of the warrants after an investigation has found probable cause to seize evidence — whether it is bloody clothes, weapons or documents.

The phrase “police state” is often overused. It’s almost a cliche. But if the Fairfax police department is serving every warrant with cops decked out in battle gear, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a more appropriate term.

And you’d be hard-pressed to argue against the fact that Fairfax’s all-SWAT-all-the-time policy is the reason Culosi is dead. Had a couple of detectives served the search warrant, in the presence of a couple of troopers, he’d still be alive.

Let’s also not lose sight of what precipitated this raid. Gambling. Fairfax cops sent a SWAT team after a bookie like Culosi (I’m not yet convinced he was a bit-time bookie, but let’s assume) out of some paternalistic notion that the government is obligated to protect its citizens from wagering away their rent money.

Meanwhile, in 2004 alone, the Virginia lottery spent $21 million on “advertising and marketing” aimed at persuading its citizens to gamble.

Odd form of paternalism, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 11:36 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling and Poker, Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.