Rise of the Warrior Cop

If the Public Shouldn’t Have Them, Why Does the IRS Need AR-15s?

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Here we go again. Stuck in the aftermath of a horrific shooting and all politicians think to do is scheme about how to take more rights from the citizenry. There are no good guys here. The Democrats want to railroad over due process by denying firearms to people on Orwellian watch lists, while Republicans plot to give the FBI more warrantless surveillance powers. This is the authoritarian knee-jerk response to tragedy we get from the U.S Congress.

Hypocritically, when it comes to foreign policy, all we hear are incessant calls for more militarism, more war and more regime change. As I warned in yesterday’s post, Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation? — 51 State Department officials just issued a cable calling for the bombing of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. An event likely to lead to direct confrontation with Russia.

While all of that is bad enough, the U.S. government continues to eagerly and aggressively arm non-defense federal employees with weapons of war.

As Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books and former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000).

For more, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from their piece, Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

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The Militarization of Police Continues…Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers, Silencers and More

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Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 3.00.29 PMThe militarization of police forces across the U.S. has been a key theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg for a long time. Despite the fact that crime rates have declined sharply across the nation since the early 1990’s, domestic police departments are arming as if they are about to confront battalions of Taliban at any given moment. It’s absurd, dangerous and ultimately very divisive as police act more like soldiers than protectors of the community. The most egregious recent example of “warrior cops” causing serious damage occurred in Georgia late last month and was covered in my post: 19-Month-Old Toddler in Critical Condition After Cops Throw Flash Bang Grenade into Playpen.

Just yesterday, The New York Times covered this terrifying trend in its article: War Gear Flows to Police Departments. We learn that:

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Video of the Day – Thuggish Militarized Police Terrorize and SWAT Team Iowa Family

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So police in the city of Ankeny, Iowa are on the hunt for a couple of people suspected of credit card fraud. Their solution? Conduct a SWAT raid on an older woman’s Iowa home with a team of at least eight militarized, storm-trooper wannabe cops. In a raid that appears more suitable for a compound in Abbottabad than a neighborhood in the corn belt, you’d at least think they were certain they had the right home? Wrong.

The police didn’t find the suspects they were looking for, and instead went ahead and arrested two other people in completely unrelated charges to justify their ridiculous behavior. If not for the fact the family had security cameras installed (which the police made every attempt to dismantle), we would have no evidence of this wildly inappropriate behavior. You seriously have to wonder what is wrong with these people. Are they still being taught their mission is to “Protect and Serve” or has this been change to “Probe and SWAT.” One seriously has to wonder.

This video is brought to our attention by Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, and now a writer for the Washington Post. I have highlighted Mr. Balko’s excellent work in the past, most recently last summer in my article: There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America, which you should definitely go back and read.

In his article for the Washington Post, Radley writes:

Watch this video, taken from a police raid in Des Moines, Iowa. Send it to some people. When critics (like me) warn about the dangers of police militarization, this is what we’re talking about. You’ll see the raid team, dressed in battle-dress uniforms, helmets and face-covering balaclava hoods take down the family’s door with a battering ram. You’ll see them storm the home with ballistics shields, guns at the ready. More troubling still, you’ll see not one but two officers attempt to prevent the family from having an independent record of the raid, one by destroying a surveillance camera, another by blocking another camera’s lens.

Now here’s the video. Brace yourself, this is extraordinarily disturbing and pathetic behavior:

Radley continues:

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Texas SWAT Team Raids Organic Farm for No Reason

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The increasing use of SWAT teams across these United States is completely and totally incompatible with a free and civilized society. As I mentioned in my recent article about how there are now 50,000 SWAT raids in America annually, many of these military-styled operations target nonviolent offenders, and are often merely money making rackets for … Read more

95-Year Old Man Tasered to Death by Police in Illinois Nursing Home

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It appears that the militarized police force running rampant on the streets of America just can’t handle the threats of a 95-year old man in a nursing home armed with a cane. Although it appears the officers are attempting to justify their violent and aggressive behavior by claiming he was wielding a “12 inch knife,” … Read more

There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America

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Yesterday, Salon published a fantastic interview with Radley Balko, author of a new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop. The interview focused on the fact that the number of SWAT team raids has soared from a few hundred annually in the 1970’s to more than 50,000 per year by 2005. To make matters worse, most of these raids are focused on non-violent crimes.  Radley identifies three main forces behind this disturbing trend. The “war on drugs,” the national overreaction to 9/11, and the creation and massive funding behind the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover, once these SWAT teams are in place, the individual police departments feel pressured to use them in order to justify their existence. More from Salon:

Radley Balko’s new book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” details how America’s police forces have grown to look and behave more like soldiers than neighborly Officer Krupkes walking the beat. This new breed of police, frequently equipped with military weapons and decked out in enough armor to satisfy a storm trooper, are redefining law enforcement.

Since 9/11, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security has distributed billions in grants, enabling even some small town police departments to buy armored personnel carriers and field their own SWAT teams.

Once you have a SWAT team the only thing to do is kick some ass. There are more than 100 SWAT team raids every day in this country. They’re not chasing murderers or terrorists. For the most part they go after nonviolent offenders like drug dealers and even small time gamblers. As you’d expect when there is too much adrenaline and too much weaponry, there have been some tragedies.

Balko talked to Salon about the decline of community policing, the warrior cop mentality, why so many dogs get killed by police. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There are several levels of militarization. The rise of SWAT teams nationwide, the number of annual SWAT deployments in the U.S., has gone from a few hundred in the ’70s, to 30,000 per year in the early ’80s, to 50,000 in 2005. That’s 100, 150 times a day in this country you have these heavily armed police teams breaking into homes, and the vast majority of times it’s to enforce laws against consensual crimes.

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