Police units increasingly resemble military teams

by **nomo** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:04 pm

Death raises concern at police tactics By Matthew Davis BBC News, Washington <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4803570.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4803570.stm</a> Some say police units increasingly resemble military teams  The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States. Armed with assault rifles, stun grenades - even armoured personnel carriers - units once used only in highly volatile situations are increasingly being deployed on more routine police missions. Dr Salvatore Culosi Jr had come out of his townhouse to meet an undercover policeman when he was shot through the chest by a Special Weapons and Tactics force. It was about 21:35 on a chilly January evening. The 37-year-old optometrist was unarmed, he had no history of violence and displayed no threatening behaviour. But he had been under investigation for illegal gambling and in line with a local police policy on "organised crime" raids, the heavily armed team was there to serve a search warrant. As officers approached with their weapons drawn, tragedy struck. A handgun was accidentally discharged, fatally wounding Dr Culosi. Two months on, investigations into the incident are still continuing, a delay which Dr Culosi's family says is compounding the "horror and burden of it all". Salvatore Culosi Sr, the dead man's father, told the BBC: "I never knew him to carry so much as a pocket knife so it bewilders me how a detective could spend three months investigating my son and not know he is a pussy cat. "If anything comes out of this it must be that another family does not experience this pain and anguish for absolutely no reason. "Policy needs to change so these kinds of accidents never occur again." 'Excessive force' Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year. "I have no problem with using these paramilitary style squads to go after known violent, armed criminals, but it is an extreme tactic to use against other sorts of suspects," he said. Mr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs. "I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds. Every wrongful death of a civilian, or criminal killing of a police officer, fuels the complex and emotive argument over the way the United States is policed. Those who reject criticism of the use of Swat teams argue that the presence of the units actually prevents violence through the credible threat of overwhelming force. John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told the BBC: "What we find is that when Swat teams go out, shootings go down. "We don't see it as escalating anything. We see it as reducing violence." The NTOA rejects Mr Kraska's figures and says the actual number of deployments is far lower, but says there is a need for national training standards. An NTOA study of 759 Swat team deployments across the US, found half were for warrant service and a third for incidents where suspects had barricaded themselves in a building - 50 were for hostage situations. When criminology professor David Klinger looked at 12 years of data on Swat teams in 1998, he also found the most common reason for calling out teams was serving warrants, but that the units used deadly force during warrant service only 0.4% of the time. Recruitment video Last year the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) commissioned music video director JC Barros to make them a 10-minute film - To Protect and Serve - that would "get young men and women excited" about a career with the force. More action film than recruitment video, it follows two LAPD officers who - in one day - capture a robbery suspect, are first on the scene when a gun-toting man takes a woman hostage, mediate a fight, and help to find a young kidnap victim. Along the way they are supported by colleagues from bike patrol, K-9 dog teams, air support and, of course, the Swat team. But Mr Kraska sees such initiatives as reflecting a changing culture of police work. "These elite units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it, they enjoy it," he says. "The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join - even if policing as a profession can - and should - be boring for much of the time.  "The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

by **nomo** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:43 pm

Good observations found on The Agitator's blog: <a href="http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026399.php#026399">www.theagitator.com/archi...php#026399</a> March 21, 2006 The BBC on SWAT Teams Here's a BBC piece on the increasing use of SWAT teams, which uses the Culosi shooting as a hook. I'd like to throw in my two cents about the study by Prof. David Klinger which purports to show that SWAT raids result in shootings in only a very small percentage of cases. The study gets thrown out every time a SWAT raid resulting in the death of an innocent makes the news. I'll begin by noting that Prof. Klinger is generally a very well respected criminologist. In fact, he's done some work on Cato, and is in principle a critic of the war on drugs. But Klinger, a former police officer, is also a well-known proponent of the ubiquitous use of SWAT teams. The study cited in the BBC article, and that Chris Roach has cited mutliple times in response to my criticism of SWAT raids, was commissioned in part by the National Tactical Officers Association, the PR instrument of the SWAT industry. That in itself would be fine, if the study were good scholarship. The problem is, we don't know what kind of scholarship it is. Because nearly ten years after it was completed, Klinger's study has yet to even be peer-reviewed, much less published. Any academic in the social sciences will tell you a study that hasn't been peer-reviewed by other academics is worthless. Yet Klinger's ten-year-old study on SWAT teams still gets pushed by the NTOA and SWAT fetishists any time any one dares to point out that using cops dressed as soldiers to serve warrants for misdemeanor pot possession is probably a bad idea. In other words, the study seems to be available for journalists, but not available for the vigorous peer-review process. The truth is, we really don' t know if police shootings are on the rise or in decline, because police departments and prosecutor's offices refuse to keep track of their mistakes (that's also why it's impossible to know just how many botched drug raids actually take place -- police don't report them, and many victims of these raids fear retaliation if they turn to the media). Criminologists have lamented the recalcitrance of police departments to report excessive force, brutality complaints, and unjustified shootings for decades. There is, simply, no reliable data on this. Even Klinger's study, as I understand it, relies on self-reporting. But even if we were to take the study at face value, it isn't a valid rejoinder to the case for limited use of SWAT teams, for several reasons. Those reasons: 1) Until the 1980s and Ronald Reagan's hyper-militarized approach to the drug war, SWAT teams were only used in situations where the suspect presented an immediate threat to the public. Critics, like me, believe that these are the only situations in which the use of a SWAT team is warranted. In that sense, one would expect a somewhat high percentage of SWAT callouts to result in gunfire. If SWAT teams are only being deployed to apprehend hostage-takers, bank robbers, and terrorist incidents, for example, then we would expect some violence each time a SWAT team is called into action. The reason the percentage of call-outs resulting in gunfire has dropped is because SWAT teams are increasingly being deployed to apprehend people who aren't violent or dangerous. When 80 percent of your deployments are to apprehend nonviolent, recreational pot smokers, yes, you're not going to be facing a lot of gunfire. Start deploying SWAT teams to write traffic tickets, and I'll bet you'll see those shooting percentages drop even further. That doesn't mean it's an appropriate use of force. 2) Those who cite Klinger's study as evidence that that the massive increase in SWAT deployments is harmless wrongly assume that the only harm done by paramilitary raids is done is when shots are fired. That's most certainly not the case. I've documented dozens of cases in my upcoming paper in which SWAT teams have broken down the door to the wrong home, and needlessly terrorized an innocent family -- and it's almost certain that the number of actual botched raids like these is exponentially higher than the number reported in the media. In other words, there's significant harm done when heavily-armed tactical units break down doors in the middle of the night, and drag innocent men, women, and children out of their beds at gunpoint, even if shots are never fired. Two of the more infamous botched SWAT raids resulting in death -- Alberta Spruill in New York and Accelyne Williams in Boston -- involved no gunfire at all. Both died from heart attacks after SWAT teams mistakenly raided their homes. There are also several cases of botched SWAT raids resulting in the death or injury of innocent people due to misuse or malfunction of the "flashbang" grenades police often use to distract the targets of a raid. 3) We also need to ask ourselves, quite simply, if we want to live in a society where its appropriate to serve warrants on nonviolent offenders with cops dressed in battle garb. I sure as hell don't. Does a pot smoker really deserve to have his door beaten down while he's sleeping? To be sworn at, forced to the ground at gunpoint, and handcuffed? Go back to that Churchill quote: "Democracy means that when there's a knock at the door at 4 am, it's probably the milkman." What does it mean that we've reached the point where not only can we no longer be sure it's actually the milkman, but that police don't even bother to knock? Factor in the fact that many of these raids are conducted on evidence as flimsy as a single tip from a single confidential informant, who may have given that tip in exchange for drugs, money, or leniency with respect to his own drug charges, and judges who've turned warrant applictations into a rubber-stamp process, and you've effectively created a police state. Cops can break down your door in the middle of the night barely any evidence at all. They can terrorize your family at gunpoint. And even when they make a mistake (and they often do), there's rarely if any disciplinary action taken, or changes in procedure to made to make sure the same mistakes don't happen again. The best example of that is the fact that the same mistakes do continue to happen. Over and over. Posted by Radley Balko on March 21, 2006 |

by **StarmanSkye** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:10 pm

Good heads-up. "The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy." Isn't this insidious, unacknowledged trend where society itself is made the 'enemy' also feeding extremist movements, esp. White Power/skinheads, neonazi types? To what extent might that be deliberate, or aggravated by special groups? The police might think of their actions as hyper-vigilance, keeping an 'eye' on people and groups, pro-actively arresting demonstrators (and even bystanders, as happened with the Repub and Democrat conventions and antiwar/G-8 protests), but there's definitely evidence of an intentional policy of an overwhelming show of force to intimidate the public from expressing disagreement or even showing individual initiative. This isn't about crime so much as the politization of law and order, presuming the moral and ideological high ground, which plays to 'obey and let us help protect you'. "Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year." -- Man, that's REALLY sick. Isn't part, anyway, of that kind of SWAT Team-mentality a hyperparanoid-reaction on the part of the power-elite, resulting from self-conscious awareness that their authority is illegitimate, that they're at-core the patsies of a corrupt, hypocritical system that is inherantly racist, patriarchal, unjust, intolerant, close-minded, bigotted, anti-democratic, etc? Protecting the status-quo has become more important than actually changing the way we do things -- it's like a formalized resistance to the very IDEA of revolution, reflected in the paranoid posturings of the Bush Cartel who don't even pretend to accomodate dissent, let alone criticism or 'different' ideas. Does this Police State attitude relate to the apparently increasing influence of neonazi or White Power groups, esp. in Europe? I'm thinking about the new popularity of Hate Rock as a recruiting tool for groups in Germany and the UK protesting immigration -- or is that too much of a leap? Could we be on the verge of seeing more White Power attitudes in the US -- as a public reaction to the hyper-vigilant targetting of Police against gang members, druggies, violent criminals, and 'terrorists'? Like, playing the 'you're either with us or with the terrorists' race-card, where the boundaries between Military and Police have become fuzzy. I think we're going to be seeing more of this schizophrenic dualism manifesting itself in society -- and I suspect the PTB will be aggravating psychological divide-and-conquer tactics, like Hitler's Brownshirts egging-on the public to shitkick the designated victims. Look how many stoooopid yellow-ribbon 'Patriots' there are anxious to show solidarity with the 'system' by way of their displaying 'support the troops' ribbons on their gas-guzzling SUVs -- without thinking what it means, and that it includes sanctioning warcrimes and atrocities in the illegal wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. You get the idea. Starman

by **nomo** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:26 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>I think we're going to be seeing more of this schizophrenic dualism manifesting itself in society -- and I suspect the PTB will be aggravating psychological divide-and-conquer tactics, like Hitler's Brownshirts egging-on the public to shitkick the designated victims.<hr></blockquote> Militarism is cool:  <a href="http://www.kansaiscene.com/2004_10/html/style.shtml">www.kansaiscene.com/2004_...tyle.shtml</a> Faux Soldier <img src="http://www.kansaiscene.com/2004_10/images/style_camoushirts.jpg" style="border:0;"/> Camouflage is an adaptation some animals use as protection from predators. An animal that uses camouflage likes to look like things in its environment. “I'm a tree, I'm a rock, I'm not really here, look over there” etcetera. Funnily enough this is why camo should now be called the invisible fashion — it's been revived, renewed, and recoloured so often that it's bordering on style staple. Ironic, isn't it? In the good ol' days camo consisted of ill-fitting army surplus couture for hippies, anti-Vietnam war protestors and punks, not to mention soldiers and hunters. Whether roo-shootin', bear- huntin', or bar- trawlin', typically people in uniform and city-soldiers avoid the bright oranges and citrus pinks. Grizzly bears are constantly foiled by camo phones, toilet paper, purses and cars. Camo batteries, pencils, hats and shoelaces keep those naughty warmongers at bay. Although it's everywhere, you can hardly notice it anymore. It is becoming a case of not seeing the camo for the trees. “I can't say I like the look, it's too easy,” says personal stylist, Rebecca Walsh. “If it's your plan to hide in a crowd, go ahead with camo.” The fact that camouflage is in so many mainstream stores coyly suggests it's now considered a solid style, not a merely a flash fad. This fad has surpassed the prediction of two years ago that it was merely a slow style cycle, taking time to catch on even though the glossy mags show it coming in and out of style mixed in with military hardware, detailing and colouring. It's been on the shelves for an age, and it will continue to sell. Ten years ago Ralph Lauren introduced his military range, three years ago Celine had bullet belts, last month DoCoMo's camo phone popped up. The popularity of camo is just like the seasonal fluctuations of waist-lines, up and down. By the time you work up the nerve to actually purchase something in this print it may be deemed passé. If you have already invested in this trend, keep it handy because it will be hot again before you can say “as if.” So what's the attraction? Uniform equals strong, and strong equals sexy. Also the broad colour spectrum means you can mix and match with just about anything already in your wardrobe. Camo works particularly well in a block-colour plus camo combo. On the flip side camo on camo is not a great idea unless you are in the armed services and about to commando roll your way across town. Although a personal rule is “More is more”, too much camouflage is a very bad thing. In relation to military style in camo colours, an epaulet here, a pocket there, a badge placed with coordinated abandon and you have struck camo sheik. “I think it's best to choose one item and leave it for people to find it themselves, don't throw it in their faces,” says Ms Walsh. “A fitted army-green military jacket with super skinny denim jeans and stiletto boots is a look that can't be done wrong, unless it's on the wrong body, that is, an unconfident body. You have to work it.” Instant attitude with kick-ass connotations. Make a statement through understatement. That's if people notice you. Camo can be done if it's done well, and if you want to invest start slow. Maybe it's all beside the point, as one fashionista put it “It's vacation time, nobody has any money to buy anything new. So every-one will be wearing what they already have.” Good luck blending in. Text: Jared Olthof • Photos: KS

by **nomo** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:40 pm

The NYPD Hercules teams are the city’s street-level deterrent. [...] They travel around in Chevrolet Suburbans with blacked-out windows, pull up to curbs, let the doors fly open, and officers in Kevlar combat helmets and body armor, carrying M-4 assault rifles, rush out. These deployments are asymmetrical, unpredictable and they deliberately follow no pattern. “They are self-conscious displays of force, presuming the existence of enemy reconnaissance.” Their goal is to create a hostile environment for terrorist operatives in the city. Their creation is based in part on the actions of the Al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris who cased the Brooklyn Bridge in 2002 and eventually sent a message to his handlers that “the weather is too hot” to carry out the mission to blow up the bridge. Investigators took this to mean that Faris picked up on the intensified police activity around the bridge, provided in part by Hercules teams. <a href="http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_242.html">www.semp.us/biots/biot_242.html</a> <img src="http://www.operationatlas.150m.com/Hercules-Team-members.jpg" style="border:0;"/> (from http://www.operationatlas.150m.com)

Police units increasingly resemble military teams

Police units increasingly resemble military teams

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Re: Police units increasingly resemble military teams

Re: Police units increasingly resemble military teams

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