Why Are SWAT TEAMS Answering Routine Police Calls?

[Segami]

The SWAT team is the big guns of policing in the United States, reserved for kidnappings, gunmen and other highly dangerous and potential volatile situations. Right? Wrong, apparently, because in recent years, the use of SWAT teams for routine law enforcement matters has been on the rise, with sometimes fatal consequences. These highly trained police personnel are being sent out on gambling raids, ordered to break up underage parties and even dispatched to handle student loan fraud. Not the best use of taxpayer resources, given the expense of maintaining a SWAT team and sending members out on calls, but more than that, it’s a troubling indicator of something going deeply wrong in America.


In the United States, the police are kept separate from the military for a number of social and political reasons. Paramilitary forces like SWAT teams, developed in 1960s Los Angeles to address considerable social unrest, are intended to be used judiciously, in situations where a threat to civilian well being and social stability is so significant that it justifies the use of considerable force and organized military tactics against members of the civilian community. Thus, a potential terrorist threat or situations in which people’s lives are endangered by a gunman or another threat of violence is an appropriate use of a SWAT team or similarly-trained arm of a police department.


But what about routine law enforcement situations? These are supposed to be the purview of the police, who are trained in how to handle them, and when to determine if they need more substantial backup. When a police raid includes a SWAT team, the mix can turn explosive and dangerous extremely quickly; and police killings, particularly of young black men, are a problem across the United States thanks to the criminalization of ordinary activities like walking down the street in baggy jeans or even existing while black. Such activities are also including searches under nebulous circumstances, the use of excessive force, and other abuses of law enforcement power that have a net effect of intimidating civilians. This is a troubling development in a nation that enshrines civil liberties and the ability to live without interference from police forces unless clear evidence of lawbreaking is occurring, and it’s evident that some police forces and their SWAT teams are overstepping boundaries, sometimes with inadequately trained personnel who aren’t prepared to deal with the complexity of a chaotic raid situation.


Absurdly, celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal and Steven Seagal are being “deputized” onto SWAT teams without any formal training, but it’s not just an honorary position. They’re going out with police officers into situations that involve contact with civilians, despite the fact that they aren’t prepared, and the results might seem comic on the news — Seagal driving a tank into a man’s living room, for example — but they are indicative of a seriously problematic trend in law enforcement, one in which heavily-armed law enforcement are flooding the homes and businesses of people who may not necessarily have committed crimes and don’t pose a significant public safety risk.


cont'



http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18225-why-are-swat-teams-answering-routine-police-calls

[KansDem]

1. By coincidence, at 10:15am the thread just above this one provided the answer...

Hightower: The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It's a corporate coup d'etat

The plutocrats are bracing for a popular uprising against their fascist overthrow of the US and fear the police will not be able to stop it.

[virgogal]

2. Watching the Canadian show,Flashpoint,has made me wonder the same thing.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. Budgets?

Assembling, equipping, training, and paying these units is astonishingly expensive and that expense goes on forever whether it is deployed or not. Since, despite the imaginations of tragically fearful idiots, America is a pretty damned peaceful and law abiding place, the events justifying the use of these militarized police units are very rare, nonexistent in most places.

So you're a city, county, or state government and you're face with revenue shortfalls, and you've got this huge expense on your books, and the people are bitching about the latest increase in sales or property taxes and some wise-ass reporter looks at the budget and writes that the police spent $127M last year on this unit that was never deployed, but your want to keep your shiny gang of scary bullies, so you kill the story by deploying them for whatever you got.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. That's pretty much it-- and practice...

in case something happens.

And, you just took officers off patrol where they are actually needed and parked them in a SWAT team, so you use the team for petty stuff when needed.

The real problem is that while these teams are rarely needed, some funding has popped up and no department ever says no to a funded project. Now that they are here, even if not needed for normal duty no department has the self-control to just leave them sitting there.

Where are the teabaggers when you need them?

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. That Texas unit shure scared the hell out of them tomato plants, didn't they? n/t

Last edited Fri Aug 16, 2013, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Fucking hippie jesus freaks won't be threatening their neighbors with agriculture any time soon...

[Segami]

8. +1

[Sunlei]

11. homeowners association always use the local police to visit the 'high grass' code criminals.

That group with the Feds mistaking tomato plants for pot plants had a 10 inch thick book of letters from their zoning board of harassment.

And todays local police call the Federal police to scan for any drugs because then they can take the home, property and any cash.

I recently read about 5% of home foreclosures are from Homeowner associations taking the home because the person couldn't pay the thousands of dollars in fines.

My own neighborhood has a 2k a day fine if one ignores the 'your grass is to tall' tickets.

[Egalitarian Thug]

14. Why on earth would you voluntarily place yourself under that kind tyranny? n/t

[Sunlei]

15. Most neighborhoods in America close to cities have zoning and/or local home owners association.

Usually already in existence when one buys a 'used' home.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. Zoning is not the same as an HOA, and I still don't understand why anyone would pay

that much money to be under that kind of control.

[Sunlei]

18. I understand that. please google HOA and note how much legal powers they have.

I said the FINES are that high in many HOA. If a person can't afford the fines it is the law, they get sued by the HOA and their home is foreclosed.

[Egalitarian Thug]

19. Yes I know all that. Don't worry, none of my friends can answer the question either. n/t

[Sunlei]

34. the answer to your question is most homes for sale already have an HOA.

At least the 100 or so homes I looked at in the Houston area did have established HOAs, 15 years ago.

Unincorporated land is about the only land one will find without LOCAL gov control/over regulating.


As an aside , HOAs used to be used to keep people of color out of some of these Houston, Texas neighborhoods. Some of the homes I looked at back then used old HOA form and they crossed out the line on the HOA form where it still said, you agree to not sell or lease to non-whites.

[awoke_in_2003]

44. And some wonder why people...

don't mind long commutes.

[Nevernose]

38. I'm in an HOA, and was actually on the board for a while

We never foreclosed on anyone's homes. Mostly we arranged lawn care and pool maintenance, enforced the most egregious parking violators, that sort of thing. Oh, and took care of gang graffiti and arranged for maintaining exterior walls. Garbage pickup, exterior lighting, stuff like that. Handled communi problems.

Out of a hundred homes, maybe -- and I emphasize maybe -- as many as three residents didn't like the HOA, and all three were certifiably batshit insane. Three percent disapproval is pretty darned good. The most frequent complaint was that we didn't do enough (we could have done more, but times are hard and we didn't want to raise rates).

The much bigger problem was the banks, who foreclosed on people and then didn't pay their HO dues, which means the HOA doesn't have as much money to operate, which means everybody's home values to down -- including the bank-owned homes.

All HOAs aren't the same, and they're not all megalomaniacs. They exist primarily to maintain a uniform set of standards, amenities, and home values.

[Egalitarian Thug]

39. What you're saying is anagolous to the "The President isn't evil, so it's OK" argument.

I'm sure you are wonderful and your HOA would never abuse its power, but the potential is always there and you won't be forever.

And that property value thing is nothing but an advertising/real estate scheme. The only thing that significantly determines property values are comps and location. The main job of a good salesperson is to disabuse the seller of their belief that their (house/car/living room set) is not worth nearly as much to anybody else as it is to them. If your area has lots of foreclosures and the accompanying fire-sale prices, the value of your home is going down no matter how nice your yard is or whether or not you have a swimming pool.

OTOH, the beauty of the long con is that the bigger it gets, the more suckers you draw in and the more you can get out of them. See Madoff or Sanborn. Once "everybody knows" something, it rolls on and on and on right up until it doesn't.

[Nevernose]

40. I thnk it's more analogous to a Green Party structure, of anything

What I like about it is that it isn't analogous to the presidency at all. It's a very small community, meaning that we are all neighbors. We literally know everyone on our street; some of us know everyone in the community by name. This makes the HOA far more answerable and responsible than any other political figures in our lives. The county commissioner really doesn't give a shit about us, while anyone on the board will certainly hear about it, because they have to live with it. Another pro about our particular HOA is that there are nine members, and only one person from each household can serve. That's about ten percent of the current population.

And you can't tell me that my home values are unaffected, because you haven't seen the home values. I live in Vegas, where it seems like everyone is underwater, but in the larger neighborhood, the HOA communities have had much less depreciation than the other neighborhoods. It's because when people come to buy or sell, the houses aren't falling apart and there aren't cars parked on the lawn, and the HOA convinced the brothel to move to a neighborhood without an HOA.

If you want to talk marketing gimmick, let's talk about "gated" communities. Without a guard, it's total bullshit. Even with a guard, it's still mostly bullshit. It's the illusion of security for the gullible. That's a realtor's scam.

[Egalitarian Thug]

41. LOL! I live in Summerlin, I know a bit about Vegas.

Are you trying to sell your house? I don't think so, because if you were you'd find that your house is worth a fraction of what it was five years ago, no matter how well you keep it or how nice your lawn is.

It's not whether your HOA is a "good one" or not, it what HOA's have the authority to do, compared with their highly questionable value for the money and benefit they provide.

If you really want to find out what I'm talking about, waste a realtor's time and pretend you're thinking of selling. If the other houses like yours in the area that have sold in the last year are going for $165K, your realtor is going to tell you to ask for maybe 5% more, assuming it really is that much better, and hope. The stuff you're talking about has some significance in a seller's market, but this is far, far away from that, especially here.

I think you missed the point about the comparison completely, but that's really not important.

Edited to add: Check out Lark's reply below, Her or his story is far more common than yours.

[lark]

28. We barely survived our old homeowners association.

They were going to foreclose when we got 1 payment behind due to my husband being laid off right after our baby was born and I was out of work an extra 3 weeks due to complilcations and couldn't make a double payment on the dues. They wouldn't even accept the payment of 1-1/2 months fees then 1-1/2 months fees paid the next month to get totally caught up. Luckily, we had a good friend who loaned us the difference to save the house and we went to CCCS to get our monthly payments down to what we could afford.

Lesson learned - avoid homeowners associations, live somewhere that doesn't have these bloodsuckers.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Exactly

Just in the PA, NJ, DE area, many small towns have dissolved their local police force and are now using either County or State Police for routine services. One of the biggest to happen recently was in Camden, NJ, where Christie eliminated the local Camden police and then forced the officers to re-apply for the Camden County (county-wide) force, covering multiple towns/townships/boroughs.

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166658788/crime-ridden-camden-to-dump-city-police-force

Even Phila. started using State police for the expressways and interstates...

http://articles.philly.com/2007-08-21/news/25230443_1_state-police-fight-crime-radar-guns

[ileus]

5. Can't let all tha fancy training and equipment go to waste...

Plus it serves as a notice of what you'll get if you fall out of line.

[bemildred]

7. To a little boy with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

A SWAT team is a great big hammer, so even itty-bitty problems look like great big nails.

And as long as we keep electing politicians that go for this militarizing the police crap, we are all going to look like great big nails.

[Sunlei]

9. because local police call the Feds routinely now to get a cut of the billions in 'drug cash'

Feds share the bonanza of loot with the local police.

Many of these small town police take cash even in small amounts and force the people to prove it's not drug cash.

They even set up traffic stops not on the incoming drug loads side of the highways..they set up on the cash side of the highways.

[Bragi]

10. Because they can

9/11 was the most important day ever for American law enforcement at all levels. It's been rolling in cash ever since.

[Arkansas Granny]

22. Local law enforcement was the recipient of so much equipment to fight the WOT that it just

boggles the mind.

[The Second Stone]

12. The militarization of police also flushes out the officers who object

who are then alienated and driven from the force, which becomes more authoritarian from the top down.

[Segami]

13. Sure,...leaving behind

the ' shoot-first-ask-questions-later ' trigger happy meatheads armed to the teeth.

[Populist_Prole]

20. Shock & Awe

To make the public over time to become more timid, and make this timidity a force of habit.

Can't have cheeky peasants getting funny ideas they can rise and challenge the PTB.

[heaven05]

21. +1000

[woo me with science]

23. K&R

[valerief]

24. But aren't O'Neal and Seagal part of the 1%? That means they can do whatever they want, because

they can buy whatever they want. And men with guns will protect them to the death.

We can never get rid of O'Neal and Seagal. We need to get rid of men with guns who protect assholes.

[Comrade Grumpy]

25. Must read: "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" by Radley Balko.

You want answers? He's got them.

This important book, just out last month, deserves to be widely read.

[RC]

26. Because it is illegal to use the US military in this country, they are militarizing the police for

that duty. One way or the other the 1% are taking over. We are as a few years from, or one false flag terrorist attack from, a total dictatorship

[midnight]

27. Does anyone wonder why the Koch funded Cato institute is mapping these troubling events?

[Comrade Grumpy]

31. Libertarians are weird like that. They worry about an encroaching police state.

So do civil libertarians.

The big, marshmallowy center, meh, not so much.

[midnight]

37. How odd they would link up with the Kochs?

[Comrade Grumpy]

42. Oh, the contradictions!

[livingwagenow]

29. Militarization of police, as said by other replies here. knr nt

[99th_Monkey]

30. When the only tool in the box is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. eom

[SCVDem]

32. Too many civillians with assault weapons

Normal hunting rifles, shotguns or even pistols with regular mags didn't freak out the cops

Lay this one on the NRA and their lobby.

[tblue37]

33. I think the evidence strongly suggests that SWAT teams are NOT

"highly trained," but merely "highly weaponized," and probably seriously amped up--perhaps on roids, or perhaps just on power and adrenaline

[mick063]

35. Domestic Militarization

The military industrial complex utopia.

The Dept. of Homeland Security must justify it's existence.

When you run out of terrorists, you must create them, either abroad or at home.

[AikidoSoul]

36. But Bush changed the laws in 2006 to enable mixture of police and military

You stated,
" In the United States, the police are kept separate from the military for a number of social and political reasons. "

That used to be true until Posse Comitatus was obliterated in 2006. GWB also got rid of Habeous Corpus. The rules changed about the military mixing it up with police action.

Here's a Daily KOS article on the topic:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/18/258936/-HUGE-Bush-Guts-Posse-Comitatus-Grabs-National-Guard-ACTION-UPDATE

And Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/vote-out-rubberstamping-c_b_32975.html?

And and excellent piece by Counter Punch:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/20/usurpation-of-power/

[Live and Learn]

43. Sad. Most Americans are at far more risk of

being killed or injured by our own law enforcers than by any "terrorist".