Homeowner Shot in Wrong House Raid

     During the early morning hours of June 27, 2006 a total of 100 federal, state and local drug enforcement agents and officers raided 23 homes in Decatur, Huntsville, Madison and Hartsville, Alabama. The raids culminated a two-year investigation of a Mexican-based cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine trafficking operation doing business in the northern part of the state. That morning, officers with the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force arrested 29 people, including Jerome Wallace, a 28-year-old who lived on Honey Way, a dirt road in rural Limestone County. A police Officer arrested Jerome as he stood in his front yard while task force members in search of him broke into the wrong house down the road. The wrong house these officers raided belonged to Wallace's uncle, Kenneth Jamar.

     Just before daybreak several vans rolled down Honey Way and parked across from Kenneth Jamar's house. Agents with the DEA, ATF, FBI and ICE, as well as the Alabama Bureau of Investigation along with Alabama state troopers and SWAT teams from Huntsville and Madison County alighted from their vehicles. A few seconds after one of the officers yelled, "Open Up! Police!" they broke into the house through the front door. Even if the 51-year-old semi-invalid with severe gout and a pace-maker heard the officers announce themselves he could not have made it to the door in time to let them in. Had he tried Mr. Jamar would have walked into a flash bang grenade explosion.

     Mr. Jamar, in his bedroom when he heard his front door bashed open and the stun grenade go off, picked up his pistol. SWAT team officers when they kicked open Mr. Jamar's bedroom door saw him standing next to his bed holding the handgun. Armed with semi-automatic rifles the officers opened fire. One of the 16 bullets from their rifles hit Mr. Jamar in the hip, another in the groin and a third in the foot. He went down without firing a shot.

     Paramedics rushed Mr. Jamar, in critical condition, to a hospital in Huntsville where he spent two weeks in the intensive care unit. After searching his house the police confiscated Mr. Jamar's gun collection. Because the SWAT team had broken into the wrong house the Limestone County prosecutor chose not to charge Mr. Jamar with attempted assault.

     In the days and weeks following this police involved shooting, newspaper accounts of the raid were sketchy because Mike Blakely, the sheriff of Limestone County, the official heading up the internal investigation of the incident did not release much information to the media. According to Sheriff Blakely, the officers had to "neutralize" a man who was "aggressively resisting." When a reporter asked the sheriff to comment on the wrong house aspect of the raid, he said, "I guess you could call it a clerical error over the address, but I don't think Jamar's dwelling even has a street address." This begged the question: if Mr Jamar's house didn't have a street address how could there have been "a clerical error over the address?"

     Because the SWAT officers who shot Kenneth Jamar were not personally responsible for the wrong house raid, and had fired their weapons in self defense, they were cleared of criminal wrongdoing. Kenneth Jamar, in June 2008 filed a $7.5 million lawsuit in federal court claiming that the city of Huntsville and other entities had violated his civil rights. In April 2011 the Huntsville city council voted to settle Kenneth Jamar's suit for $500,000.

The Ronita McColley "Wrong House" SWAT Raid

     A confidential informant told an investigator with the Rensselaer County District Attorney's Office that a number of unidentified people were selling cocaine out of three houses in Troy, New York. On June 23, 2008, a member of the county drug task force sent an undercover operative into one of the houses where he purchased cocaine from a known dealer. A few days later, a judge in Troy issued four no-knock nighttime search warrants based on nothing more than the snitch's tip and one controlled buy.

     At four in the morning on June 28, 2008, an explosion inside the house at 396 First Street awoke Ronita McColley and her 5-year-old daughter. Seconds later, officers with the Troy Emergency Response Team (ERT) and county drug police, poured into McColley's home over her splintered door. McColley would describe that moment to a local reporter this way: "The flash and then the police coming into my house, and me not having any clothes on...It was just a lot of men looking at me, and there was no female in sight." (SWAT teams are almost entirely made up of male officers.)

     After breaking down Ronita McColley's front door, smashing a window with the flash-bang grenade--which burned a hole in her carpet and scorched a wall--and rummaging through her personal belongings, the police found no evidence of illegal drug activity. Some of the officers thought they had accidentally raided the wrong house. But no, this was one of the addresses the snitch had identified as a cocaine site. No one got hurt that night, including McColley's 5-year-old daughter. The SWAT raiders did not apologize for the destruction and terror they had visited upon this innocent mother and her child. Moreover, no one in authority offered to replace McColley's door, the broken window, or the carpet damaged by the percussion grenade. This wrong house SWAT raid was just another case of collateral damage in the drug war.

     In the other raids that night in Troy, the police also failed to find cocaine. Officers recovered small quantities of marijuana, but didn't take anyone into custody. The entire operation, from a drug war perspective, was a failure. Criticism of these fruitless and potentially dangerous no-knock intrusions prompted an internal police inquiry into the operation. On September 17, 2008, the Troy Record published excerpts from Assistant Chief of Police John Tedesco's report. According to Tedesco, "The bulk of this drug investigation was predicated upon the word of the confidential informant absent further investigation. Arguably, the reputation of proven reliable information of the CI was established. However, this fact alone does not negate the need to substantiate the CI's claims. Surveillance or controlled buys at the locations is the seemingly appropriate investigative pursuit to accomplish this function." (This is how police administrators write. The assistant chief could have said, "We shouldn't SWAT raid a dwelling on nothing more than the word of a snitch.")

     Ronita McColley's attorney, Terry Kindlon, gave notice of his intent to file a federal lawsuit against the city of Troy. Interviewed by a Troy Record reporter, the lawyer said, "I sometimes think...that rather than doing thoughtful, thorough police work, they phoned it in, and ended up throwing bombs at one of the nicest, sweetest woman I have ever met." (The raid would have been just as wrong had Ronita McColley not been a nice person.)

     Attorney Kindlon filed the civil rights suit in October 2008, and on March 4, 2012, the judge in a New York state U.S. District Court, ruled in favor of the city and the police.

     Because this mindless police intrusion into a dwelling at night did not result in anyone being shot or seriously injured, this case did not attract much attention in the media. The fact that cases like this were not rare was the real story, a reality then ignored by local media outlets uninterested in incidents that did not feature blood and guts. Had Ronita McColley, thinking that her home was being broken into by criminals, picked up a gun and shot a cop, she would have either been killed, or shipped off to prison for life. For reporters, that would have been a much better story. 

Killing Monroe Isadore

     Police officers in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a town of 48,000 forty-five miles south of Little Rock, responded to a call on September 7, 2013 regarding an elderly man who had pointed a gun at two people in his house. Shortly after arriving at the scene at 4:30 that Saturday afternoon, officers managed to get the endangered people safely out of the dwelling. The man with the gun, 107-year-old Monroe Isadore, locked himself into his bedroom and refused to come out.

     Police officers who surrounded the house had the legally blind, dementia-confused old man contained. Although Mr. Isadore wasn't holding hostages or posing a threat to the general public, the officer in charge of the situation called for a SWAT team, law enforcement's heavy artillery.

     By inserting a camera into Monroe's room, SWAT team officers were able to confirm that he still possessed the handgun. After a couple of hours of trying to talk the old man out of the house, a SWAT officer tossed a teargas canister through a bedroom window in an effort to flush the subject out of the dwelling. When the teargas didn't work, SWAT officers entered the home and destroyed the bedroom door with a battering ram. A SWAT officer rolled in a concussion grenade into the room that produced a loud noise and a disorienting flash of light.

     As SWAT officers charged into the bedroom, Monroe fired his handgun. Several officers shot back, killing Monroe Isadore on the spot. The county coroner pronounced the bullet-ridden old man dead at 7:30 that evening. Just three hours had passed since the initial police call. In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the cops didn't mess around. The old man could come out of the house now or be shot to death a couple of hours later.

     While the police-involved killing of Monroe Isadore was legally justified, was it absolutely necessary? Were innocent lives at risk? Of course not. The police had the 107-year-old trapped in the house. Had the half-blind, confused old man stumbled out the front door holding the gun, a healthy 80-year-old woman could have disarmed him.

     With the police camera in the bedroom, officers could have watched and waited until Monroe either passed out, fell asleep, or set the handgun aside. At the opportune moment, an officer could have entered the house and taken this man into custody. 

     What is truly concerning here is the stupendous lack of good judgement and police discretion. Also, where was the public outrage over the unnecessary killing of a confused, legally blind 107-year-old man? Protestors sob over the execution of a cold-blooded serial killer, but shrug their shoulders when the police use unnecessary deadly force. 

Militarized Policing: The Gibson Guitar Company SWAT Raid

   The Gibson Company, located in Nashville, Tennessee, has been manufacturing quality guitars since 1830. On August 24, 2011, heavily armed U.S. Marshals and a Fish and Wildlife Service SWAT team (Yes, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a SWAT team--hell, they all do.) burst into the Gibson plant in full combat gear. Terrified employees looked on as the federal agents ransacked the place, carrying off computers, documents and other material. These SWAT unites weren't raiding a huge meth lab, a Mafia headquarters, a nest of Hell's Angeles, or a terrorist bomb making hideout. The SWAT officers had no reason to believe that anyone of the Gibson premises was armed, a fugitive from the law, or in anyway dangerous. In fact, no one associated with the company had been charged with a crime. The place could have been searched by a couple of laid-off postal workers, well, maybe more than a couple. This is government work.

     Pat Nolan, writing for National Review Online ("The Gibson Raid: Much to Fret About," September 27, 2011) describes the occasion for the SWAT raid this way: "The law that Gibson allegedly violated is the Lacey Act, which bars importation of wildlife or plants if it breaks the laws of the country of origin. It was intended to stop poachers. The ebony and rosewood that Gibson imported was harvested legally, and the Indian government approved the shipment of the wood. But Fish and Wildlife bureaucrats claim that, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers, it broke Indian law. In other words, a U.S. agency is enforcing foreign labor laws that the foreign government doesn't even think were violated."

     So what's really going on here? According to Henry Juszkiewcz, Gibson's Chairman and CEO, it's federal harassment and intimidation. Juszkiewcz has stated that the seizures (this was the third raid) and resulting manufacturing disruptions, have cost the company more than $1 million.

     In my book, "SWAT Madness," regarding modern shock-and-awe policing, I wrote: "Stunning the enemy with overpowering, high-tech ordinance as a prelude to a full-scale military invasion, while effective as a combat stategy, is not a suitable approach for ordinary, everyday law enforcement."  Regarding the trend town federalizing criminal law and law enforcement: "Police authority has become increasingly centralized through the federalization of criminal law. In the 1960's, there were fewer than 1,000 federal crimes. Today, there are 4,450 federal offenses and dozens of federal law enforcement agencies staffed by thousands of armed officers. The FBI alone fields 56 SWAT teams. Several other federal agencies have SWAT-type units such as the Special Response Team of the Bureau of Alcohol Tax and Firearms (ATF), the Special Operations Group of the U.S. Marshals Office, and the Special Response Team of the U.S. Immigration and Custums Enforcement (ICE) Office....Even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has its own SWAT Team."

     At the time I wrote that last sentence, I wondered how the Fish & Wildlife people would inappropriately utilize their SWAT teams. (Once you get a SWAT team, whether you need it or not, you have to use it.) I figured it would take imagination on their part to abuse their power this way, and I was right.

      

The Columbine Effect: The SWAT Explosion

     SWAT team use is no longer a backup, last resort law enforcement measure. Since the mid-1990's, police administrators have significantly increased the number of paramilitary units, and have incorporated SWAT-like methods and a militaristic philosophy into routine patrol duty, order maintenance, and crowd control. The expanding role of SWAT team policing parallels the history of American spree killing. For example, after a deranged shooter masssacred 21 people inside a San Diego McDonald's in July 1984, the San Diego police department began putting more SWAT-trained officers on routine patrol. (The mass murderer was killed by a SWAT team sniper.) A pair of heavily armed men, during a February 1997 bank robbery and shootout, wounded ten Los Angeles police officers and seven civilians before they were killed by SWAT bullets. Following this event in North Hollywood, the police department issued 600 high-powered rifles to officers on regular patol.

     The Columbine High School killing spree on April 20, 1999 has been the single greatest catalyst to the militarization of routine policing in America. The Littleton, Colorado killing of 12 and wounding of 24 other students by a pair of their bullied schoolmates has provided the rationale for arming and training "front line" patrol officers for SWAT operations. Critics of the police response to the mass murder point out that SWAT teams didn't enter the school until 1:09 P.M., almost 30 minutes after the killers had taken their own lives, and almost two hours after the shooting had started. Had the first responders been trained in SWAT policing techniques and appropriately armed, they wouldn't have waited for the SWAT units while people inside the building were being shot.

     Prior to the Columbine shootings, law enforcement's approach to killing sprees of this nature involved a contain-and-wait strategy designed to prevent officers and bystanders from being killed and wounded in the crossfire. Under this policy, responding patrol officers set up perimeters to contain the situation until the arrival of SWAT teams. Following the Columbine tragedy, police agencies across the country developed "active shooter" programs in which responding patrol officers are trained to rush toward the gunfire. Rather than wait for a paramilitary unit, many police departments now employ "contact teams" comprising heavily armed patrol officers who band together to enter the buildings and confront the shooter or shooters as soon as possible.

     Notwithstanding police assault training, more police officers in the schools, metal detectors, and the like, there have been, since Columbine, one-hundred school-site shootings. High-powered weapons and SWAT team tactics have not kept young psychopaths and lone-wolf depressives from unleashing their fury on vulnerable students and teachers.   

The Larry Chidester SWAT Raid: Boots in the Wrong House

     At ten on the night of May 25, 2005, the Utah County Metro SWAT team was about to break into a house on South State Street in Springville to confiscate methamphetamine, guns, and other contraband they might find in the dwelling. The Sierra Team, one of the four Utah County SWAT groups involved in the raid, pulled into the neighborhood first. The six snipers in the unit took up positions 50 yards from the target house. The Sierra snipers were in place to watch the house and report any activity at or near the dwelling to the other SWAT units as they moved into their attack positions. From this point on, any bystander who happened onto the surveillance are would be viewed through the cross-hairs of rifle scopes.

     The remaining 24 SWAT officers arrived at the scene. Alpha Team members, taking up positions 70 yards from the house, would break into the dwelling through the front entrance. Team Charlie had the side door. The Bravo squad, setting up behind a wooden fence in the back, 500 yards from the target, would enter the  house through the rear door.

     At 10:30, the Alpha, Charlie, and Bravo teams were supposed to reach the target at the same time, tossing flashbang grenades into the front, side, and rear of the  house. Because of some kind of miscommunication, the Bravo team entered the back door ahead of the other two units, which were moving toward the dwelling from 65 yards away.

     Forty-year-old Larry Chidester lived in the basement quarters of his parents' place next door to the SWAT target. Awakened by the flashbang explosions coming from the other side of his house, Larry came out his side door to investigate what he thought was a car accident. Instead, he saw a group of SWAT officers charging toward his neighbor's house. Before he got back inside, Larry heard one of the officers yell, "There's one?" Alpha Team member Jason Parker, a reserve sheriff's deputy, ran up to Larry and ordered him to the ground. Each time Larry lowered his arms to help himself down, Deputy Parker, his rifle pointed at Chidester's head, yelled, "Keep you hands up!"

     "I'm not resisting! I'm not resisting!" Larry pleaded as Deputy Parker tackled him to the ground and kept him there for a minute or so with his knee pressed into the middle of his back. Although not seriously injured, Chidester had the wind knocked out of him, and suffered abrasions to his forehead, nose, shoulder, back, and knees.

    As Larry Chidester lay pinned to the ground under reserve deputy Parker's knee, Sergeant Deke Taylor and another Alpha Team officer stormed into the Chidester house. Deputy Taylor encountered Larry's mother, Emily, in the kitchen, and at gunpoint, ordered her to the floor. The other officer found Lawrence Chidester in the bedroom sitting on the edge of his bed putting on his trousers. This deputy grabbed Mr. Chidester by the shirt and threw him to the floor, ripping the garment off his back. Shortly after the two Alpha Team officers left the Chidesters shaking and bruised, a third deputy entered the house and apologized for the armed intrusion.

     Sheriff Jim Tracy insisted that the Chidester incident did not fall into the category of a wrong-house raid. His men were merely protecting themselves by taking control of the target area. From a law enforcement point of view, the only mistake involved the deputy's on-site apology, which suggested police wrongdoing.

     The Chidesters filed suit against the Utah County Sheriff's Office and deputies Jason Parker and Deke Taylor individually for violating their Fourth Amendment rights of privacy. The deputies raised the issue of qualified police immunity, arguing that they had acted in good faith. A federal district court judge, in August 2006, ruled that the Chidesters had grounds to sue the officers as individuals. The deputies appealed this decision, and in March 2008, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Deputy Parker's actions did protect him from personal liability under the immunity doctrine. However, the appeals court judges did not bar the plaintiffs from suing Utah County and Deputy Taylor as an individual. The lawsuit is pending. 

Michael Phelps and the Mysterious Bong

      On February 1, 2009, a British newspaper published a photograph of Michael Phelps, the star of the 2008 Olympics, smoking a marijuana pipe at a party in Columbia, South Carolina. Although the photograph had been taken three months earlier, Leon Lott, the television-friendly sheriff of Richland County, known for his aggressive approach to drug enforcement, opened a narcotics investigation of the famous gold medalist swimmer.

     Sheriff Lott, in September 2008, had overseen the purchase of an Army surplus armored personnel carrier equipped with a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun. The combat vehicle was used to transport his SWAT team to drug raids. Six days after he had launched the Phelps investigation, a 12-man Richland County SWAT team, guns drawn, broke into a Lake Murray house rented by four University of South Carolina students believed to have attended the November 2008 party. After confiscating less than a gram of marijuana, Lott's deputies arrested the students for drug possession, and grilled them about Michael Phelps.As it turned out, none of the arrestees had attended the party, and were of no help in the Phelps investigation.

     From Lake Murray, Sheriff Lott's SWAT officers traveled to Columbia and raided the party house where they seized six grams of marijuana and the bong depicted in the newspaper photograph. The deputies arrested four more students, and charged them with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Thanks to the sheriff and his SWAT team, the peace and dignity of the great state of South Carolina was being secured, one marijuana possession bust at a time.

     At a news conference on February 15, 2009, Sheriff Lott announced that his officers had not gathered enough evidence to charge Michael Phelps with a crime. (This must have put fear in the hearts of the good citizens of Richland County.) "We had a photo," he said, "and we had him saying he was sorry for his inappropriate behavior. That behavior [however] could have been merely going to a party....He never said, 'I smoked marijuana.' He never confessed to that. We don't have enough we could go and arrest him."

     When a reporter asked Sheriff Lott why he, in an effort to make a case out of a 3-month-old photograph of an Olympic swimmer smoking pot, had deployed his SWAT team to raid houses occupied by college students suspected of attending the party, Lott, either missing or ignoring the point, said, "As a cop, my responsibility is to enforce the law, not to create it or ignore it. Marijuana in the state of South Carolina is illegal."

     In response to Sheriff Lott's assessment of his law enforcement responsibilities, two reporters for Newsweek wrote: "If cops chased down every kid who took a bong hit at a frat party, the jails would be full, and the lecture halls empty. Half the professors would wind up in the clink, too." But the media's principal take on the story had nothing to do with heavy-handed, militaristic law enforcement. It focused on Michael Phelp's fall from grace, and the loss of millions of dollars worth of product endorsements.

     The news coverage of Sheriff Lott's idiotic SWAT raids would have been different if one of the frat boys, believing the house was being invaded by criminals, had picked up a gun.

Drug War Shock Troops

     American law enforcement has become zero tolerant, more violent, and militarized. Local, state, and federal teams of elite paramilitary special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams regularly patrol big-city streets and break into homes unannounced. Officers on routine patrol carry high-powered semi and fully automatic weapons. Virtually every law enforcement agency in the country either has its own SWAT unit or has officers who are members of a multijurisdictional force. The barrier between the U.S. military and domestic law enforcement has broken down. The police have become soldiers and military personnel now function as civilian law enforcers. Paramilitary police officers wear combat gear, are transported in army-surplus armored personnel carriers, receive special-forces training, and view criminal suspects as enemy combatants. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies field teams of military-trained snipers. In many jurisdictions, the "public servant" concept of policing has been replaced by the "occupying force" model. The idea of community policing has become outmoded. If one didn't know any better, one would think that the nation is in the grip of an historic crime wave. Today, compared with the 1930s and the late 1960s through the 1970s, the current rate of violent crime is much lower.

     Every year SWAT teams conduct forced entry, no-knock raids into 40,000 to 50,000 homes in search of illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia. In many jurisdictions all drug-related search warrant executions involve SWAT team entries. Once a law enforcement agency forms a paramilitary unit, the officers on the team must be kept busy to stay sharp. For this reason, the great majority of SWAT raids in this country involve low-risk police work and are therefore unnecessary.

     The predawn, no-knock SWAT raid into a private home has become the signature of the government's escalating war on drugs. Even when the raids are not in some way botched, as when officers break into the wrong house, innocent bystanders, including children, are injured, manhandled, and/or traumatized. Following these raids, residents are left with broken doors, windows, and furniture as well as ransacked rooms. Occasional the "flashbang" grenades the raiders use to disorient occupants cause injuries and start fires. It is not uncommon for subjects of these raids, thinking that their homes are being invaded by criminals, to pick up guns in self-defense. These people are often shot and killed. If they shoot and kill a police officer, they go to prison. In these cases it doesn't matter that the defendants didn't know who they were shooting at. Some end up on death row.

Minneapolis SWAT

     Acting on information from a narcotics snitch, a Minneapolis SWAT team of eighteen officers, on the night of February 16, 2010, used a battering ram to enter the apartment rented by Rickia Russell. The 30-year-old occupant heard her front door being smashed open followed by the sound of a flashbang grenade rolling into her living room. Upon explosion, the percussion device ignited her sofa and seriously burned her leg. As Russell lay face-down on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back, she tried to tell the officers about her charred limb. They told her to shut up.

     The officers, armed with a warrant alleging that someone named David Conley was selling drugs out of this apartment, found no narcotics, drug paraphernalia, guns, or any other contriband or evidence of a crime. Rickia Russell did not know a David Conley. The SWAT team had obviously raided the wrong apartment. But instead of apologizing and offering to repair the damage they had caused, the police arrested Russell for the misdemeanor of operating a "disorderly house." The authorities, however, never followed through with a formal charge.

     On December 9, 2011, the Minneapolis City Council offered Russell, who had suffered permanent injuries from the flashbang grenade, a million dollar settlement. This horribly botched police operation was not the first botched paramilitary police raid in Minneapolis

The Vang Khang Raid

     Vang Khang, his wife Yee Moua, and their six children, hill people from Laos, lived in a high-crime neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis. Just before midnight on December 16, 2007, Yee Moua, while watching television, heard window glass shatter. Thinking that criminals were breaking into the house, she bolted up the stairs to where her husband and children were sleeping.

     Awakened by the commotion, Mr. Khang grabbed his shotgun, and hearing heavy footsteps advancing up the stairs, fired a warning shot through his bedroom door. Khang didn't know it, but he had opened fired on officers with the Minneapolis Police Department's Violent Offender Task Force (VOTF). The paramilitary unit had broken into the wrong house in search of street-gang guns and drugs. The exchange of gunfire that erupted after Khang's warning shot included 22 bullets from VOTF officers and two more blasts from Khang's shotgun, pellets that struck the body armor of two of the officers. The moment Khang heard his children yelling, "It's the police!" Khang, who miraculously had not been shot, dropped the shotgun and raised his arms. A few seconds later, he was on the floor with a boot planted in the middle of his back.

     The Minneapolis Police, quickly realizing that their informant had directed them to the wrong house, did not take Khang into custody. VOTF offiers, leaving behind broken windows and bullet holes in the bedroom wall, left the house without apologizing to the family they had endangered and traumatized.

     Seven months after the bungled raid, the Minneapolis police chief awarded the VOTF officers who had raided the wrong house, medals of valor for "bravery in action under fire." In December 2008, the Minneapolis City Council approved a $600,000 settlement for the Khang family.

     Paramilitary policing in Minneapolis has been expensive, and a threat to public safety.

    

A Gun Control Problem: Securing SWAT Weapons

     Burglars, on October 13, 2011, stole twenty-one MP-5 submachine guns and fifteen Colt .45-caliber handguns from storage at a SWAT training site in downtown Los Angeles. Fortunately the training weapons had been converted to fire rounds with plastic bullets. According to a Los Angeles police commander, it would take significant skill and special parts to make these weapons functional.

     What follows are a few examples of what has become a recurring problem regarding the security of SWAT weapons and gear:

June 3, 1997
Memphis, Tennessee
     Thieves stole, from an FBI SWAT team Chevrolet Suburban parked in a hotel parking lot, a cache of M-16 rifles, shotguns, tear-gas equipment, bullet-proof vests, helmets, shields, and ammunition. Police found the burned-out shell of the vehicle on the other side of town.

November 5, 2004
Dayton, Ohio
     After SWAT team practice, an officer with the Dayton-Montgomery County Regional SWAT team parked his pickup outside a restaurant where he stopped to eat. While he had dinner, someone broke into the vehicle and stole a shotgun, two rifles, and a submachine gun.

February 6, 2005
Jacksonville, Florida
     On Super Bowl Sunday at 3:45 in the morning, thieves broke into an Atlanta Division FBI van and stole eight assault weapons including four sniper rifles. Also taken were scopes and 80 rounds of 308 ammunition. The unmarked van had been parked at a Holiday Inn

November 10, 2006
Orange County, Florida
     From a SUV parked outside an Orange County SWAT team member's house, a thief stole an UMP-45 fully-automatic machine gun with a silencer, an H & K G3 assault rifle, and a Glock 21 semi-automatic handgun.

April 23, 2007
Memphis, Tennessee
     While a Wake County (North Carolina) SWAT team ate dinner at a barbecue restaurant, thieves stole seven guns from their van. Stolen were three Sig Sauer Model 551, .223-caliber fully automatic assault rifles; two Remington Model 870 pump-action 12-gauge shotguns; and one Sig Sauer Model 226, 357-caliber semi-automatic handgun.

March 5, 2008
Dallas, Texas
     A SWAT officer with the Dallas Police Department parked his pickup near a department store in a shopping plaza. A thief pried open a door and stole an assault weapon, ammunition, and two flakjackets. Less than a month earlier, a thief stole a semi-automatic handgun from a police car parked in a church parking lot.

June 29, 2008
Orange County, Florida
     A car burglar stole an AR 15 assualt rifle from a Florida Highway Patrol vehicle parked on a residential street. The thief also took a SWAT uniform, body armor, a gas mask, and more than $4,000 worth of speed-detection equipment. The car had been left unlocked, and the gear had not been secured in the trunk.

November 21, 2008
White City, Utah
     After persuading a suicidal man to surrender following a four-hour standoff outside the subject's house, the Salt Lake County SWAT team left a M 4 assault rifle in the front yard of a neighbor's house. The weapon was recovered after a citizen notified the authorities.

October 28, 2009
Dallas, Texas
     A thief stole eight Dallas SWAT team weapons from a Chevrolet Tahoe parked outside the officer's apartment building. The burglar also took body armor, uniforms and a badge. One rifle, which shoots three bullets with one trigger pull, was worth $25,000 on the black market. Three Dallas SWAT vehicles had been broken into that month.

     SWAT weapons and gear, in recent years, have also been stolen from police vehicles in: Palm Beach County and Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; Jefferson County, Colorado: Las Cruces, New Mexico; Seattle, Washington; Frederick, Maryland;and Phoenix, Arizona.  

Venezuelan SWAT: A New Weapon in the War on Drugs

     The Venezuelan National Assembly in Caracas is debating a proposed law that would allow its military to shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs. To those who love militarized policing, this is almost as good as it gets. Imagine, a SWAT team with its own air force!

Campus SWAT: The Militarization of the College Cop

     As a result of the fear mongering that follows public school and college campus spree shootings--the so-called Columbine Effect--the aging campus security guard has been replaced by the SWAT equipped and trained commando. The militarization of campus security has not made our colleges and universities any safer. It could be argued that militarized campus policing has had the opposite effect.

The Adu-Brempong Case

     On March 2, 2010, in Gainsville, Florida, members of the University of Florida's Critical Incident Response Tearm (CIRT), responded to a 911 call that a 35-year-old doctoral student from Ghana was screaming inside his on-campus apartment. Kofi Adu-Brempong was having psychotic delusions brought on by his fear that his student visa would be denied.

     Adu-Brempong, a man disabled by childhood polio, refused to come to his door and speak to the police. This led to an eleven hour standoff that ended with the CIRT officers breaking into the apartment. After failing to subdue Adu-Brempon with a taser gun and a beanbag device, a CIRT officer shot the deranged man in the head with his Bushmaster M-4 rifle. According to the police, the subject had attacked them with a knife and a pipe.

     Adu-Brempong survived his head wound and was charged with one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, and five counts of resisting an officer with violence. A judge, ruling that the police did not have sufficient evidence to support these charges, dismissed the case against Adu-Brempong.

     On August 11, 2011, the University of Florida Police Department announced that its internal investigation had found the Adu-Brempong shooting unjustified. The head of the CIRT unit, a 17-year veteran of the force, was fired. According to the internal review of the shooting, the CIRT officers should not have been deployed in this case.

    As a result of the shooting, a group of educators and filmakers produced a documentary about the case called "In His Own Home." The film reveals that the CIRT officer who shot Adu-Brempon remained on the force until he was fired for roughing up a white student who was driving a Mercedez.

More SWAT Madness

Budapest, Hungary

   A few days ago, in Budapest, Hungary, a SWAT team raided a warehouse near the airport and seized eighty-five fully-functional military-type assault rifles. The assault weapons had been flown into the country for a zombie movie being produced by Brad Pitt called "World War Z." In justifying the raid, Hungary's anti-terrorism Unit Director said the shipping documents falsely listed the weapons as non-functional.

     Now that Hungary has reduced the threat ot terrorism, what are they doing about the zombies?

Dickson, Tennessee

     Officers from several states spent a week of high intensity SWAT training in central Tennessee. The training camp, funded by Homeland Security, included sharp shooting and dealing with hostage and standoff situations. An officer from Hickman County, Tennessee told a local reporter that his SWAT team stayed "surprisingly" busy. (I'm not surprised.) The officer reportedly said this: "We have been on several calls where you may just be trying to serve a civil paper on somebody...." So, in Hickman County, if you forclose on your house, or owe back taxes, or are issued a summons because of your barking dog, expect a raid by federally trained SWAT team.  

Combat Ready in Erie, Pennsylvania

   In August, the Erie Police Department, a force made up of 173 officers in a town of 102,000, took delivery of a new Lenco BearCat armored personnel carrier (APC). The 12-foot high APC weighing more than 17,000 pounds can carry up to ten SWAT officers. It also came equipped with a 50-caliber gun turret and the technology to detect radiation and explosive gas.

     The $201,000 truck, funded by a federal grant, will be available to law enforcement agencies in Erie and four nearby counties, a region not known for high rates of violent crime. In Erie proper, police involved shootings are rare. (The last, involving the police wounding of a 17-year-old high school student, took place in July 2010.)

     For the police in this northwest corner of the state to even have a SWAT team is operationally absurd. To waste federal taxpayer money for this militaristic monstrosity compounds the problem. At best the police tank will collect dust between Fourth of July and halloween parades. At worst the police will use it to intimidate (and impress) citizens in low-risk deployments. Like hundreds of small police departments throughout the country, Erie law enforcement authorities are caught up in the SWAT team craze. While the citizens of Erie and surrounding communities are not safer, they can expect a more militarized form of policing. No wonder this country is broke.

Swat Madness

DEADLY WRONG-HOUSE RAID IN DETROIT

     On May 16, 2010, a Detroit SWAT team in search of a murder suspect, tossed a flashbang grenade into the first-floor apartment occupied by 7-year-old Alyana Stanley-Jones and her grandmother. As the officers stormed into the house, one of the raiders, amid the chaos, shot the little girl in the throat. She died shortly thereafter. A film crew with the television network A & E was on hand filming the raid for a segment of the true crime program "The First 48." (This is a show about the first 48 hours of a homicide investigation.) As it turned out, the murder suspect, Chauncey Owens, lived in the apartment above the one the SWAT team entered. Surely there had been an opportunity to arrest the suspect on the street minimizing public danger. The pursuit of officer safety should not trump public safety.

HEAVY HANDED IN STOCTON

     In Stockton, California on June 7, 2011, a 15-officer SWAT team broke into Kenneth Wright's home at 6 AM to execute a search warrant pursuant to his wife's defaulted student loans. The state department of education has asked for the raid. The police grabbed Mr. Wright and muscled him out to his front lawn in his boxer shorts where he lay on the ground with a knee in his back. The arrestee, with no criminal record or history of violence, had no idea what was happening to him. The police placed him in handcuffs and sat him in a hot patrol car for six hours. Mr. Wright's three children, ages 3, 7 and 11, were also held in a police vehicle until the raiders completed their search.  No one in their right mind would support the added cost of a SWAT team had they foreseen how these militaristic units would be unleased on unsuspecting citizens like Mr. Wright and his family.

RAID FIRST, THINK LATER

     In search of a rape suspect, an eight-man U.S. Marshal's SWAT team in Daingerfield, Texas terrified Jerry and Linda Robinson by breaking into their home at 7:30 PM on August 22, 2011. The home owners were held at gun point, not shown any identification, or told what was going on until the marshals realized they had raided the wrong house on an informant's bogus tip. The Robinsons didn't know the fugitive being sought and the man had never been in their house.  Predawn SWAT raids based on informant tips is  reckless, militaristic law enforcement. Shock and Awe tactics should be left to the military personnel engaged in real combat.