Someone reviews Balko's "Overkill"


Why doesn't anyone ask if these SWAT teams are actually needed?
"Uncle Jimbo" does a pretty good review of Radley Balko's paper on SWAT teams. Here's the good stuff.

This trend and a number of the tragic results of these policies are explored in the paper and the picture is not a pretty one. I have a very high regard for the professionalism of police officers and respect their ability to do a job I don't have the self control to handle. However, the conduct of raids to serve warrants by officers decked out in gear better suited to clearing bombs in Fallujah, rather than a pot possession warrant in Kenosha, is a bad idea and I oppose it.

The usual justification for serving a warrant with the 7th Cavalry along is the possibility of armed resistance or destruction of evidence. I am mildly sympathetic to the armed resistance reason if the offender has some history of violence, but both arguments fall short of the simpler logic of serving the warrant other than at 3 am by breaking a window, throwing in a flash bang grenade and sending a dozen robo-cops storming into someone's home. Don't these people ever leave their houses? Can't we pick them up when they head to the liquor store, or to the movies?

Once these teams exist, the bean counters want to justify the funding. That means that the teams can't just sit around, they have to be deployed.

So instead of measuring the "success" by how often the teams go into action, let's get radical. Let's compare the crime rates before the SWAT team existed with the rates after. Let's go further and compare the types of crimes.

I am willing to lay odds that in most cases, there is no justification for the SWAT teams. And I am willing to bet that if the cities had to equip the teams at actual cost, most of those SWAT teams wouldn't exist.

Anyone interested in a wager? At least until Congress tries to outlaw that too?

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - July 21, 2006 at 08:47 AM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved