SWAT raid for Dept. of Education

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Just say this yesterday & thought it was pretty, well, stupid.



An update to the story
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-team-up

Ok criminal investigation into fraud, this warrants a swat raid how?
What do you all think?

 

It would seem to be, yeah. Even if you do send the police after someone who is suspected of fraud or embezzlement (the articles don't say much about the case), these do not typically involve violence and there seems to be little evidence that the accused would resist. Unnecessary use of force is to be avoided, as it harms people on both sides of the situation.

However, I'm not sure if this is really what happened. There was a link to an article suggesting that it wasn't actually SWAT teams but another agency, and it had more to do with his ex-wife than any student loans. Still, it would be good to know that if the guy is acquitted of anything he would get his front door fixed .

 

Oh I'm not trying to imply that the swat team was from the local police agencies. I think they even stated in one of the articles that only a single unit from the police was on hand. Apparently the swat team was from a government agency, I think they mentioned the OIC?
Do we really need a swat team raid for what looks to be a case of fraud though? It just seems really heavy handed. I mean at what point do you get a swat raid? $10,000, $25,000 what?

 

NOTICE: the following is in no why related to the first swat raid
Well here is one where they killed the homeowner & it appears that their AAR is conflicting with the facts in the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting
Here is the swat video helmet footage.
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2011...aid-a-demonstration-of-tactical-incompetence/
This has to be the most mistrained bunch of guys(& what looks like 1 female) I have ever seen. There definitely should be a lawsuit from this incident.
They fired 71 rounds & hit him with 22.

Here is a map of similar & related incidents.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

 

Clearly the man was suspected despicable criminal scum and thus had coming whatever happened (and didn't yet happen) to him (after all, they didn't shoot him, right?). And even though it was actually about his estranged wife, he is clearly guilty by association, after all he did marry her, which is practically an endorsement.

In my country SWAT teams are sent after violent criminals. Debt is handled strictly on a civil law basis usually not involving any police whatsoever. But then, we don't have a right to bear arms. In a nation armed, it is in the interest of officer safety that every person suspected of anything must be suspected armed and dangerous. That's why using cops to arrest little girls who act out, and SWAT teams for, say, kindergarten riots over who gets to play with the pink teddy bear, is so eminently sensible.

I also like this story:

These leeching lawbreakers get cockier by the minute. Clearly, they must be made to feel the consequences for their actions!

Do I need to spell out the economic lunacy of allowing a situation to be created where the above "crime" is even conceivable? Stealing education?!! WTF!!! Next thing I read will probably be that she was also charged with child endangerment for being homeless.

She wanted her kid to write? Why didn't she home school it and teach it evolution, alternative history and to be pious, just as those god fearing ... oh never mind ... homeless can't quite, well, home school ... soooo ... throwing her into jail is about solving her homelessness problem /sarcasm

 

Well, yes. She probably even had dreams of her child receiveing an education and perhaps becoming a free-loading pulbic servant, like a fireman, policeman, or [gasp!] even a school teacher. The shame....

 

The irony: The woman would in Germany have gotten in to trouble (though trouble far short of jail) for not enrolling her child, since school attendance is mandatory (and as a basic service free of charge, and funded on a state basis). Here they would in an extreme case have sent the cops to drag the kid to school, not to arrest and charge the woman for the utterly preposterous and absurd crime of enrolling her child in elementary school.

What I see in this is badly mistaken priorities.

What I see in the case of the SWAT team raiding the guy's house is simply a hamfisted and eminently foolish approach to aggravate problems through the unnecessary use of overwhelming force as policy.

Had the guy, who was, since it was about his ex-wife's debt, a bystander, presumed this wasn't a SWAT team but a bunch of burglars and grabbed his gun (presuming he had one) the SWAT officers could have shot him, with impunity, since they "plausibly believed to have been under attack", and had acted in accordance with "a department policy emphasising officer safety" (at citizen expense). Sending out SWAT teams to do such routine work is setting up mischief like that to happen.

A paramilitary squad bangs down a guys door at 6 a.m, handcuff him in his boxers, and throw him and three pre-teen children into the back seat of a squad car? And ransack his home (i.e. execute the search warrant)? To then find out it wasn't about him but his ex-wife? Surprise! The very point in SWAT training is breaking resistance - real, putative or imaginary - with overwhelming force. An attack dog usually sucks at shepherding, and vice versa. As I have said before, the case amply illustrates the grand idiocy of the para-militarisation of law enforcement in the US. Next thing probably: Enforcement of parking tickets with attack helicopters.

 

That also need to get to the range. Granted, in heat of the moment, all accuracy ratings tend to go down, but 22 of 71 is still fairly poor...

Well, it's mandatory in the US too. Unless you homeschool your kid - and that's a hassle as you are required to show what you're teaching your kid - every kid in the US between 6 and 16 is required to go to school. Public schools are "free" in the sense you don't pay extra to go to them, but they are typically funded through local taxes. For example, I have a county tax of 3% of my income, and the lion's share of that amount goes to the school system.

 

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29surveillance.html?_r=1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4320817...rk_times/t/anarchist-details-life-fbi-target/

 

Ah, yes, animal rights activists are a menace to society and will kill us all in our sleep for wearing leather boots. Once again the need for security is used to justify all manner of absurdities.

"Security" is such a magic word nowadays... I was expecting things to start getting back to normal some 10 years after September 11th, but apparently fear still sells (and more importantly, gets bought).