Hello, irony.

Of course not, it acts as a provocation.

There are many historical cases of armies being reluctant to attack their own families. Portugal? perhaps the Philippines?

It is notable that the main fuss being raised now is by libertarians rather than Democrats. Democrats are worried about seeming ‘soft on crime’. Libertarians, on the other hand, aren’t going to be elected anyway, and don’t have to worry about that. But also, complaining about this sort of thing was associated with the anti-government right during the Clinton years and so maybe liberals in the U.S. now to reflexively avoid the topic? (Especially since there’s no way to pin this problem on Bush).

In any case, the larger is that the electorate broadly support these kinds of anti-drug raids and so pols of both major parties tend to do so as well. And why is there such support in the electorate? I would suggest that it is because middle class people have very little reason to fear this could happen to them. In their own neighborhoods, the police knock politely on the door.

This is just anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But for what it’s worth, in my hometown (Hamburg, Germany), career criminals cerainly do have access to illegal firearms and use them on occasion (but not against cops, usually against other criminals). On the other hand, a lot of the violence exercised by career criminals over here doesn’t involve guns but only knives, fists and other blunt objects. Guns are more of a weapon of last resort, it seems. Not something you’d brandish in any odd confrontation. Perhaps general cultural differences in the attitudes towards guns and gun use somehow rub off even on criminals?

If you really think you need a team of goons, then they should be held on a very short lease, and held rigorously accountable for any mistakes.

Having said that, the examples provided are certainly disturbing. I’ve been arrested myself, and it’s scary enough when the police are fairly polite and professional.

I guess the part of all of this that bothers me most is the willful doublethink that you encounter when discussing the police and their (mis)conduct with middle-class white people. Bring up the cops when you’re out at the bar with some friends and everyone has at least a couple of horror stories about incompetent, abusive, racist, terroristic police officers. And yet, even people who vote Democratic or Green seem to rate police issues pretty far down on their list of political criteria. The question then, is whether this kind of ambivalence is rational. Do those of us with a little bit of wealth and plenty of white skin privilege profit more from having the cops around to bust black and brown heads, or is the security we enjoy purchased at too high a price? Even many of the avowed radicals I talk to want to shy away from answering that one.

Frankly, this all seems to be another legacy of slavery to me. The police are still the most efficient maintainers of the color line, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon.

Given that we have over 2 million people incarcerated in this country, many of whom must work at slave wages or suffer SWAT-style raids on their cells for being “uncooperative”, perhaps my use of “legacy” above is a bit too euphemistic.

How many of the examples of dead innocent people in Balko’s study involve homeowners who were killed because they fired at police? I haven’t read the paper but I suspect the proportion is very small.

The jack booted kitten stompers were, as I recall, BATF agents, not regular SWAT. They stopped when Clinon left office because Bush put the BATF back on a short leash. However, in all fairness, it must be noted that it was Bush’s father, not Clinton, who originally took the leash off them. The worst that can be said in that regard was that Clinton was no improvement on the elder Bush, and nobody expected him to be.

“And yes, with gun control the police might be less likely to think a low level seller of dime bags might have enough firepower to kill a cop.”

Then the police would be damned fools, because gun control has never proven to be an effective way to disarm career criminals.

And yes, with gun control the police might be less likely to think a low level seller of dime bags might have enough firepower to kill a cop. It is conceivable, although far from certain, that they therefore might hesitate to use SWAT teams to arrest them, reserving them for their original purpose: police action against people actually likely to be heavily and illegally armed.

People in cities claim to buy guns to defend themselves against home invasion. SWAT teams exist to perform home invasions. SWAT teams therefore shoot first and ask questions later. The logic of it and the causal link seem clear enough.

First let me state that the US is as far from a condition where armed insurgency is a posibility as I can see. Political options are still an extremely viable way for changing government, and oppresion of minorities is a receding condition, not a growing one.

But you are wrong about an armed population not being a threat to the US military. If 1% of the population decided that Adolf Future-President-ler has started killing off minorities and Congressional power has lost all checks on the executive branch, and the only option is revolution, then think about this. 1% of today’s population is 3 million people. If those people are a conglomerate of armed militias, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the US army. But, 1, the US army would have trouble finding officers and soldiers who would fight this militia. And 2, imagine if the Iraqi insurgency had as easy access to the US military industrial complex as it does to the Iraqi industrial complexes, which it blows up regularly.

On a different note, I think it a bit funny that people here are blaiming the 2nd amendment for SWAT raids. Because surely criminals wouldn’t have weapons if it weren’t for the 2nd amendment, right? Criminals break the law, who would have thought?