This is the most hilarious thing I’ve read in weeks. The guy is responding to my article in last month’s Playboy that listed a few botched police raids and gave some (very) brief background on the issue (they only gave me 600 words). His thesis I guess is that Playboy is made up of a bunch of liberal weenies, which is why they don’t like police officers, which is why they published my article. The whole thing is, simply, wonderful. But here’s my favorite excerpt:

While Mr. Balko sits safely in his tony Upper West Side of Manhattan digs puffing on some thai and bemoaning the plight of those persecuted by the gestapo Police SWAT teams to the members of his Mulatto studies literature club, the very men he defames are ensuring the continuance of his existence through their thankless work- protecting the good people of this country from the barbarians within our gates.

In the article Mr. Balko uses a grand total of six examples of SWAT raids that resulted in deaths instead of arrests between the years of 2001 and 2006. He also cites the incredible rise of the use of SWAT teams, 1300% since 1980, stating that on average SWAT teams are used 110 times a day. Given the rise in SWAT action, the real story should be the lack of examples Mr. Balko is able to present in this article to prove his claims that “We the people” are under siege by the menace of “paramilitary” police units.

Awesome. Just awesome.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 at 10:17 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.