Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America

[Scott Conklin]

Cato Institute

Cato study and interactive map document bungled SWAT-style raids

Interactive map: http://www.cato.org/raidmap

WASHINGTON -- The last 25 years have seen a 1,300 percent increase in the number of paramilitary raids on American homes. The vast majority of these are to serve routine drug warrants, including for offenses as trivial as marijuana possession, according to a new study by the Cato Institute.

"These raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping," writes Cato policy analyst Radley Balko, "usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as peace officers, but as soldiers."

"Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" provides a legal, historical, and policy background explaining the trend. Balko offers a critique of "no-knock" and "short-notice" raids, explains how such confrontational tactics cause violence rather than lessening risks, and offers recommendations for reform.

The paper has an appendix of nearly 150 examples of documented botched raids, including: the case of Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old boy shot in the head during a bungled raid in Modesto, California; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old shot and killed when an inexperienced SWAT team raided a house of college-aged men guilty of recreational marijuana use; Sal Culosi, an optometrist in Fairfax, Virginia mistakenly killed by a SWAT team that had come to his home to arrest him for betting on sports games; and Mississippi police officer Ron Jones, shot and killed when Cory Maye, a man asleep at home with his daughter and who had no criminal record, mistook Jones' raid team for criminal intruders.

Balko has found more than three dozen examples of completely innocent people killed in mistaken raids, twenty cases of nonviolent offenders who've been killed, and more than a dozen cases of police officers killed by suspects or mistakenly targeted civilians who thought the police were criminal intruders.

Accompanying Balko's report, Cato is releasing also an interactive Google Maps application that plots nearly 300 examples of mistaken raids since the mid-1980s. Users can zoom in to street level, and sort raids by their end result (death of an innocent, death of a police officer, etc.), and the year of the raid. The map is available at http://www.cato.org/raidmap .

Balko concludes that these policing tactics "bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty only of misdemeanors, they terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence, and they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects."


http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

[deadin]

I guess that Cato's definition of "paramilitary" differs somewhat from mine.

Dean

[Scott Conklin]

Really? And yours would be...

[deadin]

Of, relating to, or being a group of civilians organized in a military fashion, especially to operate in place of or assist regular army troops.

[Scott Conklin]

Well, it appears you and Cato are pretty similar then...

[Coinneach]

Of, relating to, or being a group of civilians organized in a military fashion, especially to operate in place of or assist regular army troops.

And this differs from SWAT, how?

[Redworm]

maybe because SWAT != civilian?

[Coinneach]

SWAT = police = civilian, regardless of what some LEOs think.

[Rich Lucibella]

Well, it appears you and Cato are pretty similar then...

Scott-
A complimentary copy of Balko's book arrived by mail to the SWAT office yesterday....I'm looking forward to reading it.

The CATO Institute is perhaps the most intelligent and unbiased organization int this nation on matters of the US Constitution. When they publish something like this, it's worth the read.
Rich

[deadin]

Since when do regular army troops work in law enforcement within the US?
Just because they dress up in army type clothes doesn't make the police paramilitary any more than dressing up a Ruger 10/22 in a black pistol grip stock/ ventilated handguard make it an assault rifle.
That whole article sounded like just another LEO Bash to me.

[Redworm]

SWAT = police = civilian, regardless of what some LEOs think.

http://m-w.com/dictionary/civilian

2 a : one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force



but of course the defnition for paramilitary does not limit the idea to civilians

of, relating to, being, or characteristic of a force formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary military force

Since when do regular army troops work in law enforcement within the US?

A wise man who doesn't exist once said:

"There's a reason why you seperate military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

[Rich Lucibella]

deadin-
You can dislike the title of the book (I'm leafing thru it now); you can dislike the subject matter....but to call it "cop bashing" is tantamount to calling the researcher of trends in out-of-wedlock childbirths a "racist" simply for reporting numbers.

The book does not sensationalize the issues. It reports on them factually. 97 pages total; the final 16 is a bibliography of sources....522 sources for 81 pages of text. That's the CATO style.

If Balko has an "agenda" here, it's to demonstrate the cost to citizens (including children) and cops of these paramilitary type raids. If he has a point, it's that botched raids are hardly "isolated" anymore....and their numbers are growing.

You don't have to like it....but to call it "cop bashing" is to ignore the facts altogether.
Rich

[Rich Lucibella]

Page 1:
The August '05 slaying of Anthony Diotaiuto in Sunrise, FL.
10 bullets in head, chest, torso and limbs.
Raid: Still under investigation.
Total Haul: Diotaiuto's personal stash of Marijuana.

According to the Sun Sentinel report, "Police thought there was drug dealing going on in the home, and that there might be violence because Diotaiuto had a valid concealed weapons permit, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Sunday."
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/08/St...police_s.shtml

As a gun owner, that kind of thinking should certainly give you a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Rich

[Coinneach]

So, Redworm, you're saying that, according to Merriam-Webster, police = military, since they're not civilian. In this case, it's not paramilitary; it's something much worse. It's using soldiers to enforce illegal government decrees. There are no degrees of militarisation; either you are, or you are not. If you refuse to believe that cops are civilians, then you must believe that they are military. I don't. The few *good* cops I know don't believe it either. The ones who like to play soldier are the ones kicking in doors and terrorising people who've committed no crimes.

Either way, it's bollocks. Killing people in a misguided attempt to enforce common sense (namely, don't inject poison) is not acceptable.

[Redworm]

No?

one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force

A civilian is anyone that is not serving in a military, law enforcement, or firefighting capacity. MW also points out that the term "paramilitary" does not solely apply to civilians.

It's not that I refuse to believe cops are not civilians, it's not a philosophical point of view. It's a plain and simple fact of the english language.


SWAT teams are paramilitary organizations because they are not part of the armed forces yet use weapons and tactics largely sourced from the military and give off the appearance of such an organization. They are neither military nor civilian; same goes for all sworn officers, federal law enforcement agents, and (non military) firefighters.

[Bender711]

Can you say "police state":barf: ?

[Rich Lucibella]

Redworm-
You're picking and choosing your dictionaries; particularly the publication dates thereof. Police have not traditionally been considered "non-civilian" or defined as "non-civilian" in the dictionary. This is a modern construct as a result of the line between police and military being blurred by LEO Policy Makers.

From a practical standpoint, SWAT teams train in a manner most like a military unit; and that's why their actions needs to be narrowly authorized.

Finally, if Police (and Firefighters) are not "Civilians", it would then follow that the murder of US Police Officers by our enemies would not be a crime. After all, if we're in a "War" our enemies must also be combatants in that same War. Killing cops would not be targeting innocent civilians, would it?

Now, if you'd like to hang that particular free-fire-zone target on every US citizen in a Police or Fire Fighter uniform, you've made your point. For me, cops are governed by Civil Law, not the UCMJ....they are today what they have always been: Civilian Peace Officers. Their standards for use of force carry, by definition, a higher bar than a soldier in battle; though this distinction is also becoming blurred by the "If you've nothing to hide" crowd. Sometimes they need tools and tactics also used by the military.....but certainly not to serve a Mis-D warrant.

When we concede them to be any different from the rest of us; when we hold them to a different standard (higher or lower), we invite and encourage conflict between "Us and Them".
Rich

[shaggy]

Just because they dress up in army type clothes doesn't make the police paramilitary any more than dressing up a Ruger 10/22 in a black pistol grip stock/ ventilated handguard make it an assault rifle.
That whole article sounded like just another LEO Bash to me.

So because they're not really "paramilitary" its ok? What if the article referred to them as "Malibu Barbie's Happy Police Fun Patrol"? Does that make it any more acceptable when an innocent civilian gets killed because of overzealous police armed with more firepower than common sense? Somehow I think the distinction is a little meaningless when you're woken up at 3am by a flashbang in your bedroom and the business end of an MP5 in your nose because the cops got the wrong house or their informant is an idiot.

Tell me, where's the LEO bashing in the following:

On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers storm an apartment building in Harlem on a no-knock warrant. They're acting on a tip from a confidential informant, who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor.

There is no felon. The only resident in the building is Alberta Spruill, described by friends as a "devout churchgoer." Before entering the apartment, police deploy a flashbang grenade. The blinding, deafening explosion stuns the 57 year-old city worker, who then slips into cardiac arrest. She dies two hours later.

A police investigation would later find that the drug dealer the raid team was looking for had been arrested days earlier. He couldn't possibly have been at Spruill's apartment because he was in custody. The officers who conducted the raid did no investigation to corroborate the informant's tip. A police source told the New York Daily News that the informant in the Spruill case had offered police tips on several occasions, none of which had led to an arrest. His record was so poor, in fact, that he was due to be dropped from the city's informant list.

Nevertheless, his tip on the ex-con in Spruill's building was taken to the Manhattan district attorney's office, who approved of the application for a no-knock entry. It was then taken to a judge, who issued the warrant resulting in Spruill's death. From tip to raid, the entire "investigation" and execution were over in a matter of hours.

[Redworm]

I use MW because dictionary.com bothers me with popups but the OED gives essentially the same definition.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?vi...r=score%2Cname

Maybe I'm too young to remember a distinction but I've always been under the impression that cops are not civilians.

Finally, if Police (and Firefighters) are not "Civilians", it would then follow that the murder of US Police Officers by our enemies would not be a crime. After all, if we're in a "War" our enemies must also be combatants in that same War. Killing cops would not be targeting innocent civilians, would it?

Que? That would only really work if the WoD was a legal war and not just a neat little marketing slogan. I don't see how it would make killing a cop any less a crime by not classifying him as a civilian. Are there some international - or even just US based - laws that would apply to the situation we're talking about?

Their standards for use of force carry, by definition, a higher bar than a soldier in battle;

I agree, I just always figured there were more categories than simply "soldier" and "civilian". Also, I'm still not sure how I feel about holding cops to a higher standard than everyone else...I certainly wouldn't want to encourage an "us vs them" conflict but it's still a confusing issue for me.



I've gotten this thread off track, sorry.

[Rich Lucibella]

Red-
Not really off track. Much to the heart of the matter.


But you missed my question. Selling drugs is a crime. Being an Al Qaeda combatant is part of a War. So I, ask again.....since we're at War (The President says so) we can't treat combatants as criminals (The Supreme Court says so).

Ergo, if LEO's aren't civilians, they're fair game for Al Qaeda in your book? Firefighters, too? They don't get it both ways. They're either innocent civilians in time of War or they're legitimate targets.

Rich

[harrys ghost]

I came across this article from the Cato site:
http://citypages.com/databank/18/876/article1635.asp

It is pretty interesting. After outlining a pretty amazing debacle, the last few pages talk about how the Minneapolis ERU, with a compliment of up to 80 officers, conducted 35 raids in 1986. In 1996, with 58 officers, they conducted 700 (more than the LAPD). Apparently, the unit became more of a political tool than anything else.

[ZingZang]

First of all, police officers are NOT civilians, they are police officers. Same thing goes for our men and women in the military. Some of you appearantly are confusing "CIVILIAN" with "CITIZEN." They do not mean the same thing.

As for "overkill" police raids.... TOO FREAKING BAD! People get hurt sometimes. Sometimes those people are unfortunately "innocent," to use the term loosely. I can't believe the ilk that spills out of some people's minds -- police were too hard on that drug dealer??? They offended the SANCTITY of a crack house??? What's next??? People show up with shields, AR15's, and war helmets because of a little thing called "officer safety." Bottom line - police go home at the end of the shift. You don't like it, take the crack pipe out of your mouth and stop ruining my country.

[Coinneach]

Nice pro-cop rant there, ZingZang. Now take the crack pipe out of your own mouth and look at the damage caused by the WOSD:

-People who don't use are being murdered by cops who kick in the door of the wrong house. And yes, it IS murder: unjustified use of lethal force.
-Asset forfeiture laws applied against people who don't use, who have to sue to get their own property back (and who rarely do because .gov refuses to cooperate).
-People who should get help are treated as criminals, when they've harmed no one and violated no one's rights.

Your precious WOSD has caused far more damage than the meagre (if any) benefits provided.

[Rich Lucibella]

ZingZang & Coin-
I'm gonna gently ask you to tone down the blanket and/or specific insults. OK?

So, Police and Firefighters are no different than soldiers, huh? I wonder if that would be an insult to some of the guys in the Sandbox right now (many of them police officers themselves). You know, those guys who have no liberty to just up and quit? The ones who must accept an order, even if the likelihood of death is high?

I had no idea whatsoever that our Police and Firefighters worked under those circumstances.

Bottom line - police go home at the end of the shift.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I think ALL the innocents should go home at the end of the shift. When too many start going to the morgue, it's time for a paradigm shift; one that would put less cops in danger and kill less innocents in the process.
Rich

[harrys ghost]

From the referenced article (dated 1997):

Yet despite this crushing, high-stress workload, ERU members says they rarely see their efforts result in convictions. Last December, Kroll told the Star Tribune that in five years and hundreds of raids with the unit, he has never once had to testify in court on a crack-cocaine case resulting from his ERU work. A recent internal spot-check suggested that not even half the ERU's cases produce enough evidence to justify a criminal charge. Some cops in the unit, including Kroll, speculate that rather than serving their intended function--apprehending criminals too dangerous for other cops to go after--their raids are used to pacify residents and politicians who demand visible anti-crime action.