A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (12 page)

Nonviolent "Suspects"

Remember, SWAT teams originated as specialized units dedicated to defusing extremely sensitive, dangerous situations. As the role of paramilitary forces has expanded, however, to include involvement in nondescript police work targeting nonviolent suspects, the mere presence of SWAT units has actually injected a level of danger and violence into police-citizen interactions that was not present when these interactions were handled by traditional civilian officers.
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In one drug raid, for instance, an unarmed pregnant woman was shot as she attempted to flee the police by climbing out a window.
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In another case, the girlfriend of a drug suspect and her young child crouched on the floor in obedience to police instructions during the execution of a search warrant. One officer proceeded to shoot the family dogs. His fellow officer, in another room, mistook the shots for hostile gunfire and fired blindly into the room where the defendant crouched, killing her and wounding her child.
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General incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.
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In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant.
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In others, they simply barge into the wrong house
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or even the wrong building.
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In another subset of cases (such as the Department of Education's raid on Kenneth Wright's home), police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.
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SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses
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or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody
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Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for illegal drugs.

No-Knock Raids

At least 50,000–but more like 70,000–no-knock raids are carried out each year, usually conducted by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers prepared for war. However, as one retired police officer warns: "One tends to throw caution to the wind when wearing 'commando-chic' regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word 'POLICE' emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed with high tech weaponry."
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At first, no-knock raids were generally employed only in situations where innocent lives were determined to be at imminent risk. That changed in the early 1980s, when a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary units in routine police work resulted in a militarization of American civilian law enforcement. The government's militaris-tically labeled "war on drugs" also spurred a significant rise in the use of SWAT teams for raids. In some jurisdictions, drug warrants are only served by SWAT teams or similar paramilitary units and oftentimes are executed with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

Unfortunately, while few of these raids ever make the news, they are happening more and more frequently. As David Borden, the Executive Director of the Drug Reform Coordination Network, pointed out, "In 1980 there were fewer than 3,000 reported SWAT raids. Now, the number is believed to be over 50,000 per year... About 3/4 of these are drug raids, perhaps more by now, the vast majority of them low-level."
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Various news stories over the years document the fact that police have on numerous occasions battered down doors, entered the wrong houses, and killed innocent people. Journalist Radley Balko's research reinforces this phenomenon. There have been at least "40 cases in which a completely innocent person was killed. There are dozens more in which nonviolent offenders (recreational pot smokers, for example...) or police officers were needlessly killed. There are nearly 150 cases in which innocent families, sometimes with children, were roused from their beds at gunpoint, and subjected to the fright of being apprehended and thoroughly searched at gunpoint. There are other cases in which a SWAT team seems wholly inappropriate, such as the apprehension of medical marijuana patients, many of whom are bedridden."
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There was a time when communities would have been up in arms over a botched SWAT team raid resulting in the loss of innocent lives. Unfortunately, today, we are increasingly being conditioned by both the media and the government to accept the use of SWAT teams by law enforcement agencies for routine drug policing and the high incidence of error-related casualties that accompanies these raids.

All too often, botched SWAT team raids have resulted in one tragedy after another for civilians with little consequences for law enforcement. In fact, judges tend to afford extreme levels of deference to police officers who have mistakenly killed innocent civilians but do not afford similar leniency to civilians who have injured police officers in acts of self-defense.
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Even homeowners who mistake officers for robbers can be sentenced for assault or murder if they take defensive actions resulting in harm to police.
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Tragic Mistakes

Once upon a time, the motto emblazoned on police cars was "To Protect and Serve." However, as police forces have been transformed into paramilitary units, complete with riot gear and a take-no-prisoners attitude, the fear that police are increasingly overstepping their limits in carrying out these no-knock raids is on the rise. Unfortunately, the "tragic mistake" of police bursting into a house, apprehending the residents, and only afterwards corroborating their facts is also on the rise.

For example, an 88-year-old African-American woman was shot and killed in 2006 when policemen barged unannounced into her home, reportedly in search of cocaine. Police officers broke down Kathryn Johnston's door while serving a "no-knock" warrant to search her home on a run-down Atlanta street known for drugs and crime, prompting the woman to fire at what she believed to be the "intruders" in self-defense. The officers returned fire, killing the octogenarian. No cocaine was found.
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Police tasered and gunned to death Derek Hale, a decorated 25-year-old U.S. Marine who was talking to a woman and two children in front of a house in a Delaware neighborhood that police suspected was the home of an outlaw motorcycle gang member. Ordering Hale to place his hands in view, the police reportedly tasered him three times and fired three 40-caliber rounds into his chest, ultimately leading to his death. Hale had no criminal or arrest record in Delaware, and witnesses insist that he was no threat to the police. In fact, after police tasered Hale the second time, one of the independent witnesses yelled at the police that what they were doing was "overkill," to which one of the officers responded, "Shut... up or we'll show you overkill."
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Fifty-seven-year-old Alberta Spruill was getting ready for work on May 16,2003, when a police raiding party in search of a drug dealer broke down the door of her Harlem apartment, tossed in a "flashbang" stun grenade and handcuffed her to a chair. After realizing their mistake–the man they wanted lived in the same building but had been arrested by a different police unit four days earlier–the police uncuffed Ms. Spruill, checked her vital signs, and sent her to the Emergency Room. Spruill, however, who suffered from a heart condition, died on the way to the hospital.
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Similarly, in Boston, thirteen heavily-armed policemen in black fatigues smashed into the apartment of Acelynne Williams, a 75-year-old retired African-American preacher. Supposedly, they had been working off an anonymous tip that four Jamaican drug dealers lived somewhere in the apartment building. Williams died of a heart attack from the "shock and awe" of being visited by commando-like cops.
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Sometimes, even when confronted with obvious errors, law enforcement officials proceed anyway. For example, after having his house raided, Glen Williamson of Louisiana pointed out to the arresting officer that the search warrant actually said "Glen Williams," not "Williamson." In response, the officer added "on" to the name on the warrant and arrested Williamson.
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The Killing of Aiyana Jones

No-knock raids illustrate just how little protection Americans have against gun-wielding government agents forcing their way into our homes, especially when those agents shoot first and ask questions later.

Aiyana Jones

Consider what happened to 7-year-old Aiyana Jones. At 12:40 a.m. on Sunday, May 16, 2010, a flash grenade was thrown through the Jones family's living room window, followed by the sounds of police bursting into the apartment and a gun going off. Rushing into the room, Charles Jones found himself tackled by police and forced to lie on the floor, his face in a pool of blood. His daughter Aiyana's blood.

It would be hours before Charles would be informed that his daughter, who had been sleeping on the living room sofa, was dead. According to news reports, the little girl was shot in the neck by the lead officer's gun after he allegedly collided with Aiyana's grandmother during a police raid gone awry. The 34-year-old suspect the police had been looking for would later be found during a search of the building. Ironically, a camera crew shadowing the police SWAT team for the reality television show "The First 48" (cop shows are among the most popular of the television reality shows) caught the unfolding tragedy on film.
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Killinga Marine

As we saw with the case of Aiyana Jones, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams during no-knock raids only increase the likelihood that someone will get maimed or killed. Drug warrants, for instance, are typically served by paramilitary units late at night or shortly before dawn.
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Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner– especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses–a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion by armed criminals crashing through their door. The natural reaction would be to engage in self-defense.
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Yet such a defensive reaction on the part of a homeowner, particularly a gun owner, will spur the police to employ lethal force.
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Jose Guerena

Take, for example, the case of Jose Guerena. On May 5, 2011, at Jose Guerena around 9:30 a.m., several teams of Tucson, Ariz., police officers from various police agencies armed with SWAT gear and an armored personnel carrier raided at least four homes as part of what was described at the time as an investigation into alleged marijuana trafficking.
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One of those homes belonged to 26-year-old Guerena, a former Marine who had served two tours of duty in Iraq, and his wife, Vanessa.

Asleep after returning from a twelve-hour overnight shift at a local mine, Guerena was awakened by his wife who heard noises outside their house, later identified as flashbang grenades deployed by police in the backyard as a diversion.
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Seeing a man pointing a gun at her, Vanessa Guerena yelled, "Don't shoot! I have a baby!"
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Vanessa thought the gunman might be part of a home invasion by criminals, especially because two members of her sister-in-law's family were killed in 2010, with their two children in their Tucson home.
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She shouted for her husband in the next room. Jose woke up and told his wife to hide in the closet with their 4-year-old.
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