TheAgitator.com
Live Action News + SWAT Team
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008So apparently, the Toledo SWAT team does some 400 raids per year. Of the two shown in the linked video, one hit the wrong house, with two innocent people inside. The other apparently finds some dope, but there’s also a young kid in the house.
One of the officers adds:
“We try the best we can because a lot of us are parents and the last thing we want is to have any type of accident with a child. You go in with the worst-case scenario on your mind. Is there going to be shots fired? You think about it all the time when you’re doing a raid,” says Sgt. Szymanski.
One wrong move can get an officer or a suspect killed or injured.
“There have been mix-ups in the past; I’m not going to say there hasn’t.”
They completely ignore the wrong-door raid - you’d think that would be a bigger deal.
But, hey, they’re putting their lives on the line!
this is like watching a morbidly obese person say that they have slow metabolism while eating a couple of cheeseburgers…
the solution is obvious to everyone but the person with the cheeseburgers.
So of course… all the raids are in homes of black people.
You know… white people smoke dope too. You’d probably find dope in every third home a young white person lives in. All you have to do is break the door down and search.
Here’s a plan! Let’s selectively target blacks for a victimless crime with a pretty much guaranteed conviction, then stack the deck even further by arbitrarily setting an amount of dope as ‘trafficking’ even though no sales are made.
That way, huge numbers of young black men can be hauled off to jail and introduced to the hard core prison population. Thus guaranteeing lives of crime for many of them.
I bet eventually, we’d have a huge percentage of the black male population inexorably involved with the courts.
Think of all the LEO jobs that would create! Along with super powerful lobby groups defending these brave men who risk their lives breaking and entering into what are essentially random houses!
Oh wait, that’s how it works right now. Crap.
Or, an innocent third party, a wrongly-identified non-suspect, or a dog wagging its tail.
Especially the dog.
As an evil white weed smoker I have to agree with Bob. I simply don’t get hassled because I don’t fit the “profile” of someone who does drugs. I’ve always gotten a pass while I see the result of the violent goes on around me everyday. I fear for my African-American friends’ children because I see the culture of monopolized violence and tyranny they live under. You see it on cops, people that should know better readily submit to searches out of fear. They live in fear of government, they live in fear of the violent gangs that are a direct result of drug prohibition.
The drug warriors attempt to justify their violence by promising they are keeping our children safe. The truth is, their prohibition is destroying any hope of a future for our children.
Radley,
Why did you leave out the next quote from the officer:
“But ya know, that’s what makes it frickin’ cool!!!”
I’m not going to say there hasn’t been grammatical errors committed by the police department; there was.
Not to demean the officers, but if they can’t conjugate correctly, should they really be raiding houses using assault weapons and flashbang grenades?
Over 400 raids so far this year? More than one a day? Wow, Toledo certainly is a dangerous city to have so many criminals who justify using a SWAT raid. Have they tried martial law, it sure sounds necessary if SWAT has to conduct a raid more than once a day?
You know, until I actually sat down and wrote a SWAT-style-cop character into one of my stories, I never realized how terrified they are of normal people. Now, I see it everywhere.
It’s like he knows in his gut he’s doing something stupid and dangerous that would be illegal under any sane system of justice. And yet he continues because he’s afraid, not just afraid of drug dealers and nonviolent drug users, probably also afraid of not being in control.
-TimK