From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
It was difficult not to feel safe Monday inside the main exhibition hall at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
Hundreds of armed police officers — many looking like professional bodybuilders with badges, skin-tight T-shirts, camouflage fatigue pants and combat boots — crowded the aisles of the sprawling hall for the vendor show of the National Tactical Operations Conference.
Tactical robots whirred across the hall’s floor, competing for space with the conventioneers — in this case some 1,000 members of Special Weapons and Tactics teams from police agencies across the nation. The officers were drawn to row after row of exhibits of everything from firearms to body armor and the latest in night-vision equipment.
At every booth, the officers were encouraged to check out the wares, as evidenced by the red laser beams from high-tech rifle scopes constantly dancing across the ceiling.
Wonder what the family of Christie Green would make of all this.
Here’s some video:
A woman testifies against Tulsa cops in a corruption case, and is expected to testify in her family’s related civil suit against the city. In the weeks after the criminal trial, police get warrants on outstanding traffic violations, all misdemeanors, going back to 2007. Naturally, the police serve these warrants by forcing their way into her home.
No intimidation there at all, right? I mean, I’m sure Tulsa PD serves misdemeanor traffic warrants by breaking into citizens’ homes all the time.
Once they were inside her home, Tulsa PD says one officer also accidentally fired his gun. They won’t release that officer’s name.
Wrong-door drug raid on the home of a CBS News correspondent.
Some new parents got an unexpected scare Wednesday morning when they awoke to a team of armed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents attempting to raid their home.
CBS News correspondent Priya David and her husband Alex Clemens were at their home with their newborn child on Lina Avenue when they heard a banging on the door just after 7 a.m.
“Our first thought was the neighborhood is on fire,” resident Alex Clemens said. “I see what turns out to be eight uniformed, armored, armed officers – four of which are pointing guns through the window at my face.”
Just as officers were about to cuff Clemens he warned them that they had the wrong guy.
“They yelled at me ‘Is anyone else in the house,’” Clemens recalled. “I did say ‘yes, my wife is a CBS News correspondent. She’s upstairs nursing our infant baby.’ That seemed to de-escalate things a little bit.”
The suspect apparently lived across the street.
A reader sends this incredible column from Tactical Response magazine, which I gather is a periodical for SWAT types.
Team commanders must raise the profile of their teams. Stay active. Yes, I mean do warrant service and drug raids even if you have to poach the work. First, your team needs the training time under true callout conditions. If all your team does is train, but seldom deploy, you will end up training just to train. You need to train to fight. You already know that.
Second, make SWAT familiar to senior police staff. Everyone fears the unknown. Don’t let SWAT be that unknown. Make deploying SWAT something that is routine, not something only done after much hand-wringing. “Oh, no! You mean we have to call SWAT? Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t know. Really? Call SWAT? Really?”
Yes, you should have clear guidelines for activating the team. But how many times has the callout of a part-time team been delayed or denied when those callout criteria were met? We really do need to explain that SWAT is less of a threat than the people in the calls we are responding to—you know, those vewy, vewy bad people.
The column actually makes some good points about a SWAT commander knowing his team’s limitations.
But note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.
That’s the topic of my new piece at HuffPost.
First, in Memphis:
Memphis Police have raided the wrong house, slightly injuring a mentally disabled resident.
Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said officers went to the wrong address to make a drug raid and will be disciplined.
Neighbors told WMC-TV on Wednesday they watched undercover police officers break down the door of the home and rush in. The disabled man and his mother were inside.
Armstrong said such mistakes are rare, but acknowledged they have occurred before in the city. He said he’s thankful no one was seriously injured or killed. Armstrong said police execute a lot of search warrants and “accidents happen.”
The chief apologized to the homeowner and said the city will pay for damages.
An immigrant family claimed on Monday that immigration agents roughed up their grandmother during a raid in Norco.
The family said dozens of immigration agents swarmed their Norco home around 3:30 p.m. 2 weeks ago.
Josephina Martinez said her 46 year-old mother-in-law sustained bruises when gun-toting agents threw her to the ground as they searched for drugs and guns.
“These officers should have realized that these 5 people were women and children and needed to treat them as such,” said Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights. “Instead they treated them like criminals.”
Cabrera said a 2 year-old girl and a 16 year-old boy were also in the house at the time, and added that it appears that agents raided the wrong house.
Hey, San Luis Obispo County. You’re about to buy 43 dead marijuana plants. Rather than go to trial in federal court and fight a civil rights lawsuit brought by Los Osos resident Richard Steenken, the county and Sheriff’s Department agreed to settle the case for $25,000, roughly the cash value of Steenken’s marijuana plants, which were seized in a botched drug raid on a medical marijuana card holder.
“I guess it could have been more,” Steenken said of the settlement. “But it’s a long time coming.”
Steenken, a 45-year-old addiction specialist, was arrested on Oct. 15, 2008, and two days later charged with a felony for cultivating marijuana and possessing concentrated cannabis (among other charges). With a $40,000 bail set, Steenken opted to stay in jail, where he remained until Nov. 3 when the District Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges. The judge abided, Steenken was released, and he then fought to have his property returned; it eventually was, after a court order. By the time Steenken reclaimed his property, his 43 plants—which he was allowed to cultivate under state law as a medical marijuana patient—had died.
“Basically they told us, ‘We’re going to enforce federal law,’” said Steenken’s attorney, Dana Rosenburg, who specializes in police misconduct cases. “So they’re using state money … to enforce federal law, and that’s unconstitutional.”
Steenken came home in the middle of the raid and found armed deputies at his home. They raided the home of his then-girlfriend three hours later.
A. Barton Hinkle has a good column on police militarization today, and not just because he quotes me (though that helps!).
There is one point Hinkle concedes that I’m not sure he should: I’ve still yet to see any empirical data to support the contention that criminals in the U.S. are arming themselves with more powerful weapons—at least in significant numbers. I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes to that effect from police officials while justifying their new APV or armament of military-grade machine guns. But nothing in the way of data.
In fact, in Overkill (see pages 27-28), I noted that the only two studies available at the time—one done in 1995 by the National Institute for Justice and one published in 1991 by Dave Kopel and Eric Morgan—came to the opposite conclusion. Both those studies are pretty dated now, but I’ve yet to see anything newer to support the broad contention that criminals in the U.S. are moving toward higher-powered weapons. But I also haven’t tracked the issue as closely as I did while I was researching that paper. If anyone knows of something more recent, please send it my way, or throw up a link in the comments.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, SWAT team raids house looking for narcotics, finds none. Instead, issues citation for keeping a “disorderly house.”
And it’s not the first time they’ve charged someone with that after coming up empty.
Actually, the end result in this particular case is an isolated incident.
A federal jury awarded $333,000 to a Chicago family Thursday after Chicago police officers raided its South Side home with guns drawn and shot its dog in a search that found no criminal activity in the apartment.
Teenage brothers Thomas and Darren Russell were in their second-floor apartment in the 9200 block of South Justine Street in February 2009 when officers announced they had a warrant to search both units of the two-flat. Thomas Russell, then 18, opened the door and found officers with their guns drawn, according to the lawsuit. Russell said that he put his hands in the air and asked permission to lock up his 9-year-old black Labrador, Lady, before they entered.
Police refused the request and came into the house, the lawsuit said. When Lady came loping around the corner with her tail wagging, Officer Richard Antonsen shot the dog, according to the suit, which alleged excessive force, false arrest and illegal seizure for taking the dog’s life.
Thomas Russell was arrested and charged with obstructing police but was later found not guilty. No drugs were found in the Russell family’s apartment, though police recovered drugs in the building’s other unit, the family’s lawyers said.
It’s rare for a suit like this to even get into court, much less result in substantial damages. Even more extraordinary, the jury actually ordered one of the cops to personally pay out punitive damages, though it was only $1,000 (and I’m not sure—that may still be covered by the city, or perhaps by the police union).
Guess we’ll see if the award holds up on appeal. But it would be great to see more of this kind of accountability.
My new piece at Huffington Post looks at what’s happened in the three months since the SWAT raid that killed Jose Guerena.
I’m currently working on a story about a pot raid in which the cops emptied a woman’s “lady drawer” onto her bed, lined up her sex toys, took a photo, then mocked her for what they found. That’s only a small part of the story. But it’s a weird part.
As it turns out, there’s also a Facebook group dedicated to cops’ fascination with the sex toys they find on drug raids.
When Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team raided several businesses and homes in August they confiscated guns, cash, a computer, business records from the safe and filing cabinet, and at least one vibrating dildo out of the one of the victims bedrooms.
Cannabis Attorney Matt Abel relayed a similar situation with one of his clients, victims of a drug raid who had personal items taken by the SWAT team. Matt’s take on it is that the Narcotics Officers hope the victims won’t go to trial for fear their highly private devises will be publicly displayed.
“What do they think?” he asks, “that the vibrators were used in a crime? Used to transport drugs? Bought with drug money?’
Well folks, I figure it’s likely that those fellas at Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement just need a little more love in their life. Perhaps a cup of hot tea, a good friend that listens unconditionally, and more dildos might assist in elevating their compassion level.
That’s why we’re starting the Dildos For Justice Campaign.
Also, an oldie but goodie:
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