An unsupervised SWAT team


It gets more and more frightening
Radley Balko details the actions of the North Richland Hills SWAT team.

They're right. It is. Though some mere procedural hoops can in effect allow them to conduct every just about any drug-related raid without knocking first. Apparently, even those minor hoops were too much for this particular police department.

As it turns out, Sargeant Wallace did zero follow-up investigation after the initial anonymous tip. It also turns out that Davis' mother is a fairly well-known true-crime writer. Family attorneys say there's evidence Wallace ordered this raid because of the press that would accompany a drug bust of a novelist's son. Wallace insists he never knew Mrs. Davis was a writer, though court records show the anonymous tipster mentioned it several times. Davis family attorneys also say there's evidence from crime photos of police tampering with the crime scene, and that forensics reports indicate Davis didn't fall where police say they found him. The family admits it owns guns -- Davis's father was a retired state trooper. But they say Troy wasn't carrying one when cops entered the apartment. Not that it matters. If cops break down your door and storm your home without announcing themselves, I think just about anyone is obliged to take up arms.

But it gets worse. The case pops back up in the news today. As the Davis suit approaches trial, we now learn that apparently no one in North Richland Hills was actually overseeing the SWAT team. Not only that, but nothing has been done since the shooting of Troy Davis to change the tactics and procedures of the SWAT unit. The city's showing zero remorse, zero cooperation, and zero willingness to change.

There was exactly one murder in North Richland Hills during 2004. So why do they have a SWAT team?

At some point we have to ask ourselves if the cure is worse than the disease.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - November 18, 2005 at 04:34 PM  Tag


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