[Para Bellum]

NarcSgt,

thanks for your post. I didn't compare a Troopers possibilities to those of a SWAT team. What I wanted to say in response to a prior post is that we might have so few (none I know of) criminal survivors of gunfights with Austrian police because (i) Austrian Police never roll alone and (ii) any kind of critical tasks (eg search for guns and weapons etc) here is done by SWAT teams. That's the point I tried to make.

The fact that it actually was Coates' primary mission to search for guns and drugs alone is pretty stunning again. You guys spend gazillions on things lik the B-2 Bomber or a war for oil and your troopers have to search for the most dangerous of criminals (armed drug trafficers) alone. And then they tell you it's a tax thing. Wow. well, at least that makes me satisfied with paying way more taxes in Europe than you do in the US. And it also makes me shiver of deep respect for the people who go out there on this mission and do high-risk searches alone. I - honestly - wouldn't dare to.

I assumend that Coates just did all that "what's the weather down there"-talk to ease the situation and get permission for his search. But that also kind of stunns me. Here in Europe LEO can search you if there is a reason for suspicion. They don't need your consent at all. And that's a good thing IMHO.

That's why such searches can be done by special response units. It happens on my way to the airport from time to time. SWATs block the street and search each vehicle. Imagine Blackburn in that type of situation. If society has a need to search cars, society should think about the lifes of it's LE-Personell and give them the right to do so and the opportunity to do so as safely as possible.

And anyway, which drug/gun/corps-trafficer would agree to being searched? That whole idea reminds me of the form you have to fill out when you fly into the USA. One of the first Questions on that form goes something like: "Are you planning a terrorist attack on US soil?". Who in the world would answer that with yes? Which criminal in the world would open his trunk voluntarily to show you the heroine, handgranades or corpses he is smuggling? There is a kind of logic behind these patterns I am not able to comprehend.