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I get the feeling that some folks on here are pretty anti-leo which is fine...everybody's got their issues, I don't like crotch rockets or domestic beer, but the whole "jack booted thug" thing and Gestapo references by some is both amusing and annoying. I would like some informed suggestions from the folks who have never executed a warrant how to go about hitting a potentially violent house full of gang members or dopers without using the dreaded SWAT tactics? No pie in the sky feel good, politically correct answers. Imagine that YOU were the first guy in the stack and tell me how to do it.
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I'm not a policeman. I've not spent one day on the force. I have however worked with LE on the local, state, and federal level. My uncle is a retired police chief for a suburb of Minneapolis. One of my good friends here in Baghdad is a former south central Los Angeles patrol officer.
This does not qualify me as a cop and I don't pretend to think that it does. I do however get a good glimpse of how things are because I'm accepted into that inner circle. I've heard the stories and I know the mentality. I know the character traits. Cops have their own little society and it has evolved into an "US verses THEM mentality." It's even worse at the Federal level cause now you have the word "agent" attached to your name and somehow this is interpreted to mean that we minions are all indentured to you. Its why the majority of you all keep to yourselves at home and have very few (if any) friends outside of work.
After all, it is a jungle "out there."
Your job is difficult and under appreciated. I totally agree. No one here has suggested otherwise. A lot of other jobs carry risk too. PSD assets here in Iraq also have a daunting task. They assume huge personal risk and liability. They too are the first to be cast to the wolves when things go to hell. I've worked in parallel with Blackwater USA (now called Xe for some stupid reason) for 2 years and 9 months. I've witnessed in 1st person some of their mistakes. Know though that for every screw up they've had, there's
a 1,000 things they've done right.
Guess what? No one really gives a _hit.
My point is if you can't handle the job, get out and go work for UPS or a cake bakery. Whining about how daunting, risky, and thankless your job is on a gun site forum is pretty weak and it serves as a very poor attempt to distract from the heart of the real matter at hand:
Unannounced warrant sweeps trample on what this country is supposed to be all about.
It is an ineffective practice that needs to go away. You sit there advocating it when you should be refusing it because you TOO are an American citizen. Peel the blue 5.11 shirt off and take away your badge and your just like the rest of us. I often think that LE forgets this.
Now, to directly answer your question of how to do it when I'm on point with my shield and little pistol:
1st. I don't. There is no stack, there is no battering ram.
I fall back to what SWAT "really" means: Sit Wait And Talk. (a joke, but with a point)
I
Sit until the sun comes up
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Wait until the people being served/arrested leave the house and I have a visual confirmation. (I know it's bad PR to profile but does a 60 year old woman really fit the portrait of a banger dealing crack or meth?)
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And as I move in to serve the warrant.
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Talk as they are served.
OR
I use
"all of my training and experience as a police officer" to realize that these are not the people I thought they were and I start yelling abort at the top of my lungs so that I don't violate their civil rights because regardless of anything else these are my fellow citizens. Doing so greatly reduces the need to consider "opportunity, ability, and jeopardy". I also do this because it also puts
my people at unnecessary risk and liability. Remember, our safety is also a major consideration.
The point is I find another way.
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Imagine that YOU were the first guy in the stack and tell me how to do it.
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I'll tell you that as the point on a stack I know that once I feel that squeeze on my shoulder I am the final decision maker and the events that follow ultimately rest on my decision to enter that house or to stand fast.
Just how many more of these balloons do you need to see?
