TheFederalistWeasel
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US: Deaths Raise Questions about US SWAT Teams
Police: Accidents, Deaths And Raids At Wrong Addresses Put Pressure On Departments To Disband Groups. Officers Defend Paramilitary Units As Effective When Used Properly.
The fatal shooting in September 1999 of Denver resident Ismael Mena, 45, by SWAT team members who forced their way into what turned out to be the wrong house.
The 1996 death of Larry Harper, an Albuquerque resident who was despondent and threatening to kill himself as SWAT officers, summoned by his family, arrived and shot him to death. The city's SWAT team was dismantled after his shooting.
The 1997 death in tiny Dinuba, Calif., of Ramon Gallardo, a 64-year-old farm worker, after SWAT officers burst into his home looking for a stolen gun and shot him. A federal jury awarded Gallardo's family $12.5 million--later reduced to $6 million--in one of the largest judgments in a police brutality case.
And in Southern California, the 1999 death of Compton resident Mario Paz, whom SWAT officers shot in the back during a nighttime raid from El Monte. Police suspected that a drug suspect had used his Compton house but later acknowledged they had no evidence that Paz or his family was involved in trafficking.
Some academics and others dispute the criticism of SWAT teams, saying that their use in drug raids keeps everyone safer. The National Tactical Officers Assn., a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group, said data it has collected show that nearly 80% to 90% of such raids end with no shots fired.
David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri and a former Los Angeles police officer, said SWAT teams, if properly trained and deployed, can reduce the chances of a shooting in violent situations. But that still does not account for the rash of SWAT Team related accidents recently.
During the last five years, there have been at least 730 incidents in which citizens or officers were injured or killed during SWAT team raids on private homes, Klinger said. In many of those cases, either the wrong house was raided or officials later determined that use of the SWAT team had been unnecessary, he said
Now before you go off the deep end and accuse me of being anti-police here me out. I served with a central Georgia Sheriffs Department for 4 years. The last 1and a half I was assigned as the sharpshooter for our SWAT Team.
After digging deep I believe I have found something that may shed some light on this.
THE CLINTON ERA BY THE NUMBERS
His Legacy: More Federal Law Enforcement, Less Money for A Range of Other Services.
Far more federal investigators. Many more prosecutions of questionable crimes and an obvious attempt to criminalize gun owners. The continuing dominant role of the war on drugs. A decreasing emphasis on white-collar crime. More and more time required for the completion of criminal prosecutions. The unchanging reluctance of federal prosecutors to deal with brutal police officers. Less enforcement of existing laws.
Those are some of the important ingredients of the Clinton legacy. While President Clinton's influence was felt throughout the federal government, it is in the area of law enforcement that some of his Administration's most striking aspects can be documented. Considered together, they point to an Administration that, while talking about liberal values, was extremely successful in capturing the political support of a law-and-order constituency that for many years had mostly backed the GOP. Often, the role of the White House was relatively minor. But since President Clinton has casually claimed credit for many good things that happened, whatever the size of his contribution, it seems only fair to judge his performance by that same standard.
Perhaps the most startling development of the Clinton years was the change in the basic makeup of the federal government. With the end of the cold war, the number of uniformed personnel in the military went down. Significantly, however, the 1999 federal payroll listed almost 25 percent fewer civilian employees--in relation to population--than it did in 1992. Meanwhile, the number of federal law enforcement was increasing. In 1992 there was one criminal investigator for every thirty federal employees. In 1999 there was one criminal investigator for every twenty employees. Clinton is leaving us with a government that has become more concerned with investigating the people and less able to provide the public with a range of other services. Why is this? Well, with Clinton attempting to outspend every previous administration in recent history in funding the always-popular "war on crime," the startling success of Justice in the budget battles was predictable.
Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Bureau of Prisons were among the biggest winners within the department. It is well worth noting that the Clinton Administration's FBI is larger today--in raw numbers and in relation to population--than at any time in history. Including World War II, the cold war and the period of civil disturbances related to the Vietnam War and after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Individuals listed with the occupational specialty of "intelligence officer" nearly quintupled, jumping from 224 to 1,025. During the Clinton Administration the FBI saw a rise in officers trained as SWAT members, an increase of over 1,000% from previous administrations.
Criminal enforcement, immigration prosecutions and illegal drug prosecutions all increased sharply during the Clinton Administration. But one area experienced a sharp decline, guns.
By contrast, there was one specialized area that went through an extraordinarily steep decline during the same period: the enforcement of the nations guns laws by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Referrals by ATF for federal prosecution declined by 44 percent from 1992 to 1998 while ATF raids increased 46%. One such example was the ATF was its 1993 raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. But no one should forget that the ATF raid itself and the FBI's subsequent horrific effort to end the hostage situation were also dismal parts of the Clinton legacy.
The sharp decline in ATF referrals in the 1992-98 period became a significant political issue in the presidential campaign when the Republicans and the National Rifle Association teamed up to attack the Administration's enforcement priorities. With some legitimacy they joined in asking why Clinton used a series of shooting incidents during the period to make high-publicity requests that Congress pass new gun-control laws when his Administration was not fully enforcing the ones already on the books.
The data suggest that the federal government President Clinton leaves behind has become less able to serve the traditional needs of the American people but better equipped to investigate and prosecute them. Clinton gave moving speeches about his concern for African-Americans. But when it came to dealing with brutal police officers--a matter of special concern to black Americans--his government followed a minimalist approach. After almost every major shooting incident of the past few years, Bill Clinton called for new gun-control programs. But when it came to enforcement, his government seemed to lose its way.
Assuming President-elect Bush succeeds in getting John Ashcroft as his Attorney General, the question is just how much of the current policy this outspoken conservative will change.
The Gentlest Ride into Hell Americans Have Ever Experienced recent history will judge this President on two things: the state of the economy and foreign affairs. During his two terms in office President Bill Clinton presided over a booming stock market and managed to avoid any unseemly military quagmires.
Thus, despite dozens of personal scandals and serious political-and perhaps criminal-problems, he'll probably be remembered at best as a great, but flawed, leader.
But not to the millions, who've fallen prey to the Clinton Justice Department War machine, the most well oiled policing apparatus America has ever known.
The Drug War legacy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush included property forfeiture, expanded police powers and a zero- tolerance policy, along with an expanded prison system to accommodate all those who bucked the law. President Bill Clinton inherited these. But when he first took office, many in the drug-policy-reform movement were optimistic that the man demonized by his right-wing opponents, as an ex-hippie draft dodger would reverse this legacy.
Instead, doomed by his politically disastrous "I did not inhale" campaign line, he has cravenly allowed federal, state and local law enforcement to recklessly expand all the tools left to him.
In the Clinton years, federal and local police overreach in the name of the Drug War shredded much of what remained of the Bill of Rights. And those most frequently caught in its web were not the "drug kingpins" legislators claimed to be going after. Mothers, fathers, small-time dealers, medical-marijuana users and even innocent civilians including children were caught in a criminal- justice system so overgrown no one is immune to the new powers Johnny Law uses to protect us from ourselves. And while much of the horror heaped on the American public has occurred at the state and local levels, the tenor of the times begins at top-which places the responsibility squarely at Bill Clinton's feet.
Oops! Wrong Address:
A family in Ohio is at home singing carols on Christmas Eve when masked FBI agents dressed like Navy SEALS in black wielding suppressed machine guns kick down the door and wrestle Dad to the ground: The agents got two digits of the address mixed up.
An elderly Latino man in Texas is shot to death in his sleep when FBI and local police SWAT Teams raid his house; the informant who provided the address lied. The FBI did not verify the address before launching a 60-man raid on a house of only 6 rooms totaling 1,000 square feet.
These are not isolated incidents. Goaded on by the promise of big forfeitures to beef up police budgets, anti-drug forces from the inner city to the redneck heartland are knocking down doors first, blasting their way in as if the SAS storming an enclave of Hezbola terrorists and asking questions later. Often they rely on paid informants who lie to get a share of the loot. Sometimes they just read the address wrong on the warrant. Innocent residents pay with their Fourth Amendment rights, the sanctity of their homes-and sometimes their lives.
Accelyne Williams, a Methodist minister from Boston, died of a heart attack in 1994 while wrestling with members of a SWAT team who had raided the wrong apartment.
In Brooklyn, a drug squad acting on an informant’s bad tip terrorized Anna and Jerry Roman and their three children holding them at gun point for three hours until a judge could review the evidence and made the determination the police had raided the wrong house.
No-knock raids became so common in New York City that in 1994 the police created a special unit just to replace the doors of city residents who had been terrorized by the drug squads.
On the afternoon of Sept. 29, 1999, 13 SWAT team members stormed the upstairs apartment at 3738 High St. in Denver, looking for drugs. They were executing a no-knock raid; one of about 200 approved by the city police that year. Resident Ismael Mena, 45, worked the night shift at a Coca-Cola plant and slept during the day. After breaking open the front door, the SWAT team found the door to Mena's room latched, and kicked it in.
Police say they found him armed with a .22 revolver, standing on his bed. Officers claim they screamed "Police!" and "Drop the gun!" repeatedly. Mena started to put the gun down, asking, "Policia?" But police say when they then moved to disarm him; he again raised the gun. Officers opened fire. Mena, a father of nine, was hit by eight bullets and killed instantly. No drugs were found.
The next day, SWAT team officers learned they had raided the wrong residence-they should have gone next door, to 3742 High St. Officer Joseph Bini, who obtained the warrant, is facing a felony charge of first-degree perjury for allegedly fabricating evidence. The Justice for Mena Committee insists that police planted Mena's gun to cover them for the killing. Denver Police Chief Tom Sanchez, who left for a Hawaii police conference the day after the killing, has been forced to step down.
Federal Agents and Police as Hit Men:
One of the peculiarities in the Clinton Drug War was the allocation of funds and the development of special drug task forces that combine the manpower of federal, state and local agencies-but frequently operated without the oversight of any particular agency. These paramilitary police squads have racked up hundreds of documented assaults on innocent people and killed several alleged low-level dealers who were unarmed an occasionally fleeing while being shot in the back.
When a Kentucky drug task force came to uproot his plants in August 1993, pot-grower and Disabled Vietnam vet Gary Shepherd told them, "You will have to kill me first," took out his rifle and sat down on his front porch. That evening he was shot dead in front of his infant son and two family members. Despite the fact that Shepherd never fired a shot and his family was pleading with authorities for negotiations which never were attempted, a state police sharpshooters appeared from the brush dressed in a military style snipers ghuille suit without warning and opened fire striking Shepherd in the head.
In 1997, John Hirko, a 21-year-old unarmed Pennsylvania man with no prior offenses, was shot to death in his house by a squad of masked police dressed in military commando uniforms. They didn't even knock before tossing a smoke grenade through a window, setting fire to the house. Hirko, suspected of dealing small amounts of marijuana and cocaine, was found face down on his stairway, shot in the back while fleeing the fire. His house was completely burned during the incident.
Police in these instances were found legally justified in committing the homicides because of the "no-knock exception" to the Fourth Amendment in cases involving the execution of search warrants on drug suspects.
Goodbye, Posse Comitatus:
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement, but once again our nation's War on Drugs has perverted both the spirit and the letter of the law, permitting the military to operate in several regions of the country. In the lush woodlands of Northern California, epicenter of outdoor marijuana cultivation in America. A multijurisdictional teams of county, state and federal officers survey the mountains and forests for pot plants every fall as part of a coordinated effort called CAMP-the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, which uses US military helicopters equipped with infrared optics and night vision gear and other equipment illegally.
In Hawaii, the Pentagon-backed eradication effort against pot growing has been waged for more than 6 years. Pesticide-spraying choppers patrol the jungle in what authorities openly view as a test program for eventual export to the mainland. On the Big Island, Air Force RF-4C Phantom reconnaissance jets survey the ground for crops-followed by police choppers with specially designed pesticide spray guns. The spray poisons groundwater supplies and edible crops, and has caused hundreds of physical ailments and several deaths.
In the Gulf of Mexico USAF AWACS planes are routinely used to track suspected drug planes and vector US Customs Blackhawk helicopters equipped with door mounted M-60 machine guns to intercept them. On one occasion a Miami Surgeon was summonsed from his weekend retreat in the Bahamas to the hospital for an emergency operation. He piloted his own private airplane from Freeport to North Perry Airport in Miami, but was intercepted by the US Customs helicopter at night. The NTSB found that he lost control of his aircraft as the helo passed just 100 feet overhead of the Piper Cherokee causing it to plunge 2,500 feet into the Atlantic Ocean killing the Doctor. In this case the NTSB and the FAA we both denied requests to interview the pilots of the US Customs helicopter. All the investigators had to go by was a single radar tape from a Miami Air Traffic Control Center.
And on the Mexican border, for the past several years, quietly and with little media coverage, elite Pentagon troops have been moved into position along the Rio Grande and the southern deserts of Arizona and California to back up Border Patrol and state police in antidrug operations. In 1996 a camouflaged Marine fatally shot an 18-year-old Mexican-American goat herder named Ezequiel Hernandez near Big Bend, Texas, bringing the program before the public eye-and throwing it into question before Congress. And in 1994 a member of the US Army Rangers while on “patrol” in southern California shot and killed a Mexican immigrant after he stepped on his foot as he hid out in a small area of underbrush.
In 1996 the Senate Armed Services Committee angrily rejected a request by the FBI to use USAF spy satellites to photograph a 6 block section of Miami, FL. In conjunction with a drug investigation.
Reading this you could reach the conclusion that there has been a militarizing of our police both federal as well as local. Just look at your average SWAT Team these days. The problem with elite units (such as the SWAT Teams) is that they can get out of hand if a short leash is not constantly applied. They get to thinking of themselves as better than their contemporaries and start dressing in special uniforms... to better identify themselves of course...
Compounding the problem, many of these SWAT Teams watch too much TV The ‘Delta Force/Navy Seal image’ has taken over, and the black costume has become the uniform of the day for most such organizations. Unfortunately to avoid giving themselves away to the bad guys, many of these outfits have even taken to removing their police identification patches when operating by themselves. This is (as best I can figure) sorta’ like taking your bars off in combat to keep from identifying yourself to the enemy. The only reason they hang ‘Police’ patches on their uniforms is when they are going to be working with other Police units also wearing black... after all a member of the Gestapo wouldn’t want to shoot an NKVD agent now would he? Larger departments of course must identify themselves during tactical operations (New York, L.A., etc.) due to the impossibility of personal recognition of all officers within a city of multiple millions of residents. This is simple self-survival. Much confusion could be avoided by simply wearing the normal police uniform. If more mobility and roominess is needed in a tactical uniform, a universally recognizable set of coveralls/utilities/fatigues should be adopted that would be instantly familiar to the general public (preferably blue in color).
The second danger is that the officers-in-charge of such elite units are not necessarily the most ‘laid back’ of individuals and rarely exercise restrain. It is a very short step for such units to the “go ahead, make my day!” syndrome. Mercifully most civilian police units (state and local) of this type are kept in check by several factors. If I were a total cynic, I’d say that the lack of funds in a local scenario is the real safeguard. More to the point, these are community police officers dealing with local folks many of who are friends or at least acquaintances. These same citizens are the Sheriff and/or Police Chief’s boss(s) and continued misconduct on the part of a local unit would get these Police Officials canned. The key factor here is the local law enforcement organization’s accountability to the local citizens.
This is not one of the saving graces of a Federal Agency.
A Federal Agency can come in, rape, pillage and burn (figuratively speaking), since they have no direct accountability to the local citizens. The hierarchy of the agency involved will invariably back their agent’s play even if they’re obviously wrong. This is getting extremely scary folks!
How did that old saw about the residents of Nazi Germany go? “I did not object when they came to arrest the Jews, because I was not a Jew...”
I submit to you that “The Thin Blue Line” still exists for the most part on the State and Local level. They are still an underpaid, unappreciated, hard working group of individuals doing their best to protect the average citizen. This, even in the shadow of a court decision that states that the police (as a group) are not required to protect the individual citizen only the public as a whole...
And yet the ‘Feds’ seem determined to disarm us, removing the individual’s citizens right to self-defense. The Feds maintain that defending the public is the job of the police. Now wait a minute... Talk about circular logic! No ladies and gentlemen, it’s not “The Thin Blue Line” that scares me, it’s “The Thin Black Line”. Right now they’re after our guns. When they have those it’s only a short distance to ‘subversive books’, ‘speeches that criticize the power structure’, ad nausem. I did not object when they came to arrest the Jews because I was not a Jew...
So as you begin to digest this and prepare to respond thank your luck stars that Al Gore is now unable to carry on the legacy of his teacher and mentor Bill Clinton. At least for the next four years anyway.
TFW
Police: Accidents, Deaths And Raids At Wrong Addresses Put Pressure On Departments To Disband Groups. Officers Defend Paramilitary Units As Effective When Used Properly.
The fatal shooting in September 1999 of Denver resident Ismael Mena, 45, by SWAT team members who forced their way into what turned out to be the wrong house.
The 1996 death of Larry Harper, an Albuquerque resident who was despondent and threatening to kill himself as SWAT officers, summoned by his family, arrived and shot him to death. The city's SWAT team was dismantled after his shooting.
The 1997 death in tiny Dinuba, Calif., of Ramon Gallardo, a 64-year-old farm worker, after SWAT officers burst into his home looking for a stolen gun and shot him. A federal jury awarded Gallardo's family $12.5 million--later reduced to $6 million--in one of the largest judgments in a police brutality case.
And in Southern California, the 1999 death of Compton resident Mario Paz, whom SWAT officers shot in the back during a nighttime raid from El Monte. Police suspected that a drug suspect had used his Compton house but later acknowledged they had no evidence that Paz or his family was involved in trafficking.
Some academics and others dispute the criticism of SWAT teams, saying that their use in drug raids keeps everyone safer. The National Tactical Officers Assn., a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group, said data it has collected show that nearly 80% to 90% of such raids end with no shots fired.
David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri and a former Los Angeles police officer, said SWAT teams, if properly trained and deployed, can reduce the chances of a shooting in violent situations. But that still does not account for the rash of SWAT Team related accidents recently.
During the last five years, there have been at least 730 incidents in which citizens or officers were injured or killed during SWAT team raids on private homes, Klinger said. In many of those cases, either the wrong house was raided or officials later determined that use of the SWAT team had been unnecessary, he said
Now before you go off the deep end and accuse me of being anti-police here me out. I served with a central Georgia Sheriffs Department for 4 years. The last 1and a half I was assigned as the sharpshooter for our SWAT Team.
After digging deep I believe I have found something that may shed some light on this.
THE CLINTON ERA BY THE NUMBERS
His Legacy: More Federal Law Enforcement, Less Money for A Range of Other Services.
Far more federal investigators. Many more prosecutions of questionable crimes and an obvious attempt to criminalize gun owners. The continuing dominant role of the war on drugs. A decreasing emphasis on white-collar crime. More and more time required for the completion of criminal prosecutions. The unchanging reluctance of federal prosecutors to deal with brutal police officers. Less enforcement of existing laws.
Those are some of the important ingredients of the Clinton legacy. While President Clinton's influence was felt throughout the federal government, it is in the area of law enforcement that some of his Administration's most striking aspects can be documented. Considered together, they point to an Administration that, while talking about liberal values, was extremely successful in capturing the political support of a law-and-order constituency that for many years had mostly backed the GOP. Often, the role of the White House was relatively minor. But since President Clinton has casually claimed credit for many good things that happened, whatever the size of his contribution, it seems only fair to judge his performance by that same standard.
Perhaps the most startling development of the Clinton years was the change in the basic makeup of the federal government. With the end of the cold war, the number of uniformed personnel in the military went down. Significantly, however, the 1999 federal payroll listed almost 25 percent fewer civilian employees--in relation to population--than it did in 1992. Meanwhile, the number of federal law enforcement was increasing. In 1992 there was one criminal investigator for every thirty federal employees. In 1999 there was one criminal investigator for every twenty employees. Clinton is leaving us with a government that has become more concerned with investigating the people and less able to provide the public with a range of other services. Why is this? Well, with Clinton attempting to outspend every previous administration in recent history in funding the always-popular "war on crime," the startling success of Justice in the budget battles was predictable.
Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Bureau of Prisons were among the biggest winners within the department. It is well worth noting that the Clinton Administration's FBI is larger today--in raw numbers and in relation to population--than at any time in history. Including World War II, the cold war and the period of civil disturbances related to the Vietnam War and after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Individuals listed with the occupational specialty of "intelligence officer" nearly quintupled, jumping from 224 to 1,025. During the Clinton Administration the FBI saw a rise in officers trained as SWAT members, an increase of over 1,000% from previous administrations.
Criminal enforcement, immigration prosecutions and illegal drug prosecutions all increased sharply during the Clinton Administration. But one area experienced a sharp decline, guns.
By contrast, there was one specialized area that went through an extraordinarily steep decline during the same period: the enforcement of the nations guns laws by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Referrals by ATF for federal prosecution declined by 44 percent from 1992 to 1998 while ATF raids increased 46%. One such example was the ATF was its 1993 raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. But no one should forget that the ATF raid itself and the FBI's subsequent horrific effort to end the hostage situation were also dismal parts of the Clinton legacy.
The sharp decline in ATF referrals in the 1992-98 period became a significant political issue in the presidential campaign when the Republicans and the National Rifle Association teamed up to attack the Administration's enforcement priorities. With some legitimacy they joined in asking why Clinton used a series of shooting incidents during the period to make high-publicity requests that Congress pass new gun-control laws when his Administration was not fully enforcing the ones already on the books.
The data suggest that the federal government President Clinton leaves behind has become less able to serve the traditional needs of the American people but better equipped to investigate and prosecute them. Clinton gave moving speeches about his concern for African-Americans. But when it came to dealing with brutal police officers--a matter of special concern to black Americans--his government followed a minimalist approach. After almost every major shooting incident of the past few years, Bill Clinton called for new gun-control programs. But when it came to enforcement, his government seemed to lose its way.
Assuming President-elect Bush succeeds in getting John Ashcroft as his Attorney General, the question is just how much of the current policy this outspoken conservative will change.
The Gentlest Ride into Hell Americans Have Ever Experienced recent history will judge this President on two things: the state of the economy and foreign affairs. During his two terms in office President Bill Clinton presided over a booming stock market and managed to avoid any unseemly military quagmires.
Thus, despite dozens of personal scandals and serious political-and perhaps criminal-problems, he'll probably be remembered at best as a great, but flawed, leader.
But not to the millions, who've fallen prey to the Clinton Justice Department War machine, the most well oiled policing apparatus America has ever known.
The Drug War legacy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush included property forfeiture, expanded police powers and a zero- tolerance policy, along with an expanded prison system to accommodate all those who bucked the law. President Bill Clinton inherited these. But when he first took office, many in the drug-policy-reform movement were optimistic that the man demonized by his right-wing opponents, as an ex-hippie draft dodger would reverse this legacy.
Instead, doomed by his politically disastrous "I did not inhale" campaign line, he has cravenly allowed federal, state and local law enforcement to recklessly expand all the tools left to him.
In the Clinton years, federal and local police overreach in the name of the Drug War shredded much of what remained of the Bill of Rights. And those most frequently caught in its web were not the "drug kingpins" legislators claimed to be going after. Mothers, fathers, small-time dealers, medical-marijuana users and even innocent civilians including children were caught in a criminal- justice system so overgrown no one is immune to the new powers Johnny Law uses to protect us from ourselves. And while much of the horror heaped on the American public has occurred at the state and local levels, the tenor of the times begins at top-which places the responsibility squarely at Bill Clinton's feet.
Oops! Wrong Address:
A family in Ohio is at home singing carols on Christmas Eve when masked FBI agents dressed like Navy SEALS in black wielding suppressed machine guns kick down the door and wrestle Dad to the ground: The agents got two digits of the address mixed up.
An elderly Latino man in Texas is shot to death in his sleep when FBI and local police SWAT Teams raid his house; the informant who provided the address lied. The FBI did not verify the address before launching a 60-man raid on a house of only 6 rooms totaling 1,000 square feet.
These are not isolated incidents. Goaded on by the promise of big forfeitures to beef up police budgets, anti-drug forces from the inner city to the redneck heartland are knocking down doors first, blasting their way in as if the SAS storming an enclave of Hezbola terrorists and asking questions later. Often they rely on paid informants who lie to get a share of the loot. Sometimes they just read the address wrong on the warrant. Innocent residents pay with their Fourth Amendment rights, the sanctity of their homes-and sometimes their lives.
Accelyne Williams, a Methodist minister from Boston, died of a heart attack in 1994 while wrestling with members of a SWAT team who had raided the wrong apartment.
In Brooklyn, a drug squad acting on an informant’s bad tip terrorized Anna and Jerry Roman and their three children holding them at gun point for three hours until a judge could review the evidence and made the determination the police had raided the wrong house.
No-knock raids became so common in New York City that in 1994 the police created a special unit just to replace the doors of city residents who had been terrorized by the drug squads.
On the afternoon of Sept. 29, 1999, 13 SWAT team members stormed the upstairs apartment at 3738 High St. in Denver, looking for drugs. They were executing a no-knock raid; one of about 200 approved by the city police that year. Resident Ismael Mena, 45, worked the night shift at a Coca-Cola plant and slept during the day. After breaking open the front door, the SWAT team found the door to Mena's room latched, and kicked it in.
Police say they found him armed with a .22 revolver, standing on his bed. Officers claim they screamed "Police!" and "Drop the gun!" repeatedly. Mena started to put the gun down, asking, "Policia?" But police say when they then moved to disarm him; he again raised the gun. Officers opened fire. Mena, a father of nine, was hit by eight bullets and killed instantly. No drugs were found.
The next day, SWAT team officers learned they had raided the wrong residence-they should have gone next door, to 3742 High St. Officer Joseph Bini, who obtained the warrant, is facing a felony charge of first-degree perjury for allegedly fabricating evidence. The Justice for Mena Committee insists that police planted Mena's gun to cover them for the killing. Denver Police Chief Tom Sanchez, who left for a Hawaii police conference the day after the killing, has been forced to step down.
Federal Agents and Police as Hit Men:
One of the peculiarities in the Clinton Drug War was the allocation of funds and the development of special drug task forces that combine the manpower of federal, state and local agencies-but frequently operated without the oversight of any particular agency. These paramilitary police squads have racked up hundreds of documented assaults on innocent people and killed several alleged low-level dealers who were unarmed an occasionally fleeing while being shot in the back.
When a Kentucky drug task force came to uproot his plants in August 1993, pot-grower and Disabled Vietnam vet Gary Shepherd told them, "You will have to kill me first," took out his rifle and sat down on his front porch. That evening he was shot dead in front of his infant son and two family members. Despite the fact that Shepherd never fired a shot and his family was pleading with authorities for negotiations which never were attempted, a state police sharpshooters appeared from the brush dressed in a military style snipers ghuille suit without warning and opened fire striking Shepherd in the head.
In 1997, John Hirko, a 21-year-old unarmed Pennsylvania man with no prior offenses, was shot to death in his house by a squad of masked police dressed in military commando uniforms. They didn't even knock before tossing a smoke grenade through a window, setting fire to the house. Hirko, suspected of dealing small amounts of marijuana and cocaine, was found face down on his stairway, shot in the back while fleeing the fire. His house was completely burned during the incident.
Police in these instances were found legally justified in committing the homicides because of the "no-knock exception" to the Fourth Amendment in cases involving the execution of search warrants on drug suspects.
Goodbye, Posse Comitatus:
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement, but once again our nation's War on Drugs has perverted both the spirit and the letter of the law, permitting the military to operate in several regions of the country. In the lush woodlands of Northern California, epicenter of outdoor marijuana cultivation in America. A multijurisdictional teams of county, state and federal officers survey the mountains and forests for pot plants every fall as part of a coordinated effort called CAMP-the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, which uses US military helicopters equipped with infrared optics and night vision gear and other equipment illegally.
In Hawaii, the Pentagon-backed eradication effort against pot growing has been waged for more than 6 years. Pesticide-spraying choppers patrol the jungle in what authorities openly view as a test program for eventual export to the mainland. On the Big Island, Air Force RF-4C Phantom reconnaissance jets survey the ground for crops-followed by police choppers with specially designed pesticide spray guns. The spray poisons groundwater supplies and edible crops, and has caused hundreds of physical ailments and several deaths.
In the Gulf of Mexico USAF AWACS planes are routinely used to track suspected drug planes and vector US Customs Blackhawk helicopters equipped with door mounted M-60 machine guns to intercept them. On one occasion a Miami Surgeon was summonsed from his weekend retreat in the Bahamas to the hospital for an emergency operation. He piloted his own private airplane from Freeport to North Perry Airport in Miami, but was intercepted by the US Customs helicopter at night. The NTSB found that he lost control of his aircraft as the helo passed just 100 feet overhead of the Piper Cherokee causing it to plunge 2,500 feet into the Atlantic Ocean killing the Doctor. In this case the NTSB and the FAA we both denied requests to interview the pilots of the US Customs helicopter. All the investigators had to go by was a single radar tape from a Miami Air Traffic Control Center.
And on the Mexican border, for the past several years, quietly and with little media coverage, elite Pentagon troops have been moved into position along the Rio Grande and the southern deserts of Arizona and California to back up Border Patrol and state police in antidrug operations. In 1996 a camouflaged Marine fatally shot an 18-year-old Mexican-American goat herder named Ezequiel Hernandez near Big Bend, Texas, bringing the program before the public eye-and throwing it into question before Congress. And in 1994 a member of the US Army Rangers while on “patrol” in southern California shot and killed a Mexican immigrant after he stepped on his foot as he hid out in a small area of underbrush.
In 1996 the Senate Armed Services Committee angrily rejected a request by the FBI to use USAF spy satellites to photograph a 6 block section of Miami, FL. In conjunction with a drug investigation.
Reading this you could reach the conclusion that there has been a militarizing of our police both federal as well as local. Just look at your average SWAT Team these days. The problem with elite units (such as the SWAT Teams) is that they can get out of hand if a short leash is not constantly applied. They get to thinking of themselves as better than their contemporaries and start dressing in special uniforms... to better identify themselves of course...
Compounding the problem, many of these SWAT Teams watch too much TV The ‘Delta Force/Navy Seal image’ has taken over, and the black costume has become the uniform of the day for most such organizations. Unfortunately to avoid giving themselves away to the bad guys, many of these outfits have even taken to removing their police identification patches when operating by themselves. This is (as best I can figure) sorta’ like taking your bars off in combat to keep from identifying yourself to the enemy. The only reason they hang ‘Police’ patches on their uniforms is when they are going to be working with other Police units also wearing black... after all a member of the Gestapo wouldn’t want to shoot an NKVD agent now would he? Larger departments of course must identify themselves during tactical operations (New York, L.A., etc.) due to the impossibility of personal recognition of all officers within a city of multiple millions of residents. This is simple self-survival. Much confusion could be avoided by simply wearing the normal police uniform. If more mobility and roominess is needed in a tactical uniform, a universally recognizable set of coveralls/utilities/fatigues should be adopted that would be instantly familiar to the general public (preferably blue in color).
The second danger is that the officers-in-charge of such elite units are not necessarily the most ‘laid back’ of individuals and rarely exercise restrain. It is a very short step for such units to the “go ahead, make my day!” syndrome. Mercifully most civilian police units (state and local) of this type are kept in check by several factors. If I were a total cynic, I’d say that the lack of funds in a local scenario is the real safeguard. More to the point, these are community police officers dealing with local folks many of who are friends or at least acquaintances. These same citizens are the Sheriff and/or Police Chief’s boss(s) and continued misconduct on the part of a local unit would get these Police Officials canned. The key factor here is the local law enforcement organization’s accountability to the local citizens.
This is not one of the saving graces of a Federal Agency.
A Federal Agency can come in, rape, pillage and burn (figuratively speaking), since they have no direct accountability to the local citizens. The hierarchy of the agency involved will invariably back their agent’s play even if they’re obviously wrong. This is getting extremely scary folks!
How did that old saw about the residents of Nazi Germany go? “I did not object when they came to arrest the Jews, because I was not a Jew...”
I submit to you that “The Thin Blue Line” still exists for the most part on the State and Local level. They are still an underpaid, unappreciated, hard working group of individuals doing their best to protect the average citizen. This, even in the shadow of a court decision that states that the police (as a group) are not required to protect the individual citizen only the public as a whole...
And yet the ‘Feds’ seem determined to disarm us, removing the individual’s citizens right to self-defense. The Feds maintain that defending the public is the job of the police. Now wait a minute... Talk about circular logic! No ladies and gentlemen, it’s not “The Thin Blue Line” that scares me, it’s “The Thin Black Line”. Right now they’re after our guns. When they have those it’s only a short distance to ‘subversive books’, ‘speeches that criticize the power structure’, ad nausem. I did not object when they came to arrest the Jews because I was not a Jew...
So as you begin to digest this and prepare to respond thank your luck stars that Al Gore is now unable to carry on the legacy of his teacher and mentor Bill Clinton. At least for the next four years anyway.
TFW
