When I read things like this:
Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week.
It just amazes me that so many people in the USA are complacent about the state of their civil liberties. Quite a few people in Blighty seem to have belatedly grasped what deep shit we are in on this side of the Atlantic, and when we run some article lamenting the latest outrage by the British state here on Samizdata, invariably we get some comments from The Cousins across the Water telling us how screwed we are. Indeed, but back at yah, guys.
They send in para-military assault police to arrest people for playing poker? Jeez. There is much to be said for the Second Amendment but clearly the whole ‘keep and bear arms’ thing does not go nearly far enough if that sort of behaviour by the state is regarded as ‘normal’. How about ringing your house with a goddamn minefield? I guess they do not have any real crimes in the People’s Republic of California for the police to worry about.
We, personally, are thinking of a moat filled with rabid alligators. Have to bridge that pesky cold-blood barrier with some genetic tinkering first…
But srsly, California is technically not part of the US anymore. It consistently has the looniest laws/regulations/activities…remember Heinlein’s novel Friday? Today’s California is about five minutes away from that barmy California Confederacy.
Perry,
In the USA we do actually have more freedom on some of the bigger issues.
The exceptions are poker games, prostitution, bootlegging, etc., where money changes hands without being taxed.
Being left out of the revenue stream is, of course, an outrage and must be stopped by any means necessary.
To add icing to the cake, here’s another quote from a local newspaper reporting on the story:
Great. Now having frequent guests in your home is a ground for serious suspicion of criminal activity, and citizens are encouraged to denounce their neighbors.
I’m rarely the one to throw caustic remarks at Americans, but… “land of the free”???
For sure! But you also have it worse in some big ways too, such as extra-territorial super-ownership, the alarming militarisation of US policing and process-free asset seizure by various arms of the state. Those are not minor issues.
Part of my reason for additional alarm is I would like a place worth running to if the last ditch falls here, at least until the system implodes in on its own contradictions and a degree of sanity reasserts itself.
All of this SWAT crap is caused by the feds redistributing our wealth as anti-terror and anti-drug funding for local departments.
Once you have a SWAT team, the team just itches to go out and kick ass.
SWAT:
Do Not Want!
Heh.(Link)
Oh, and another comment related to the above call to show your patriotism by anonymously denouncing neighbors who make use their homes as bases for social life. (As a side note, I have no doubt that modern statists view socializing in private homes with instinctive revulsion, as a rare example of a sphere of social life that is still mostly outside the reach of their beloved networks of ubiquitous surveillance and micro-regulations. But I digress.) It’s unbelievable how the same people who loudly cry “1984” when faced with certain realistic, but still distant and relatively minor threats to personal freedom stay completely complacent and silent (or even approving!) when the state is building the infrastructure and creating precedents for this sort of outright totalitarian measures. I mean, it’s not like I’m a fan of the Patriot Act, but compared to even the worst parts of it, the attitudes and practices displayed by the San Mateo cops (and increasingly popular within law enforcement everywhere) seem to me as infinitely more frightening.
Of course, this sort of stuff has been made possible by the drug war, which has for decades provided the pretext for introducing the paramilitary and Chekist ideas and practices into police forces around the world, and especially in the U.S. Unfortunately, with the popular support for the drug war being very near 100%, and likely to stay that way in the foreseeable future, I see no grounds for optimism in this regard.
I don’t know that there is that much support for the drug war,but we have a problem of rational ignorance. I just wish we had more jury nullification here.
Perry is right about the (real) civil liberties problems in the US. Do you think any of the pretenders who worked themselves into such a tizzy over the rights of terrorists will waste any time on the rights of their poker-playing neighbors?
We all know the answer. And what it shows is that most of the bleaters on “civil rights” don’t actually give a tinker’s damn about civil rights. Just as most so-called environmentalists don’t care in the slightest about the environment.
Blood in the gutters — it is the only way things will change.
I’ve lived in the USA for almost a year (a year on Tuesday in fact) and while there are many many things I love dearly about it, there are a lot that I don’t.
There are many many fundamentally nanny-ish about the British government and the way the British systems work, but at least I always felt I was dealing with something human made and operated when I dealt with government or government agencies.
From getting a Driving License (queue, be questioned like a criminal, get treated like a criminal, get photographed like a criminal, wait around for hours for no reason) to interacting with banks (treated like a criminal and money taken for no reason, and don’t get me started on the interest rates) to dealing with utility providers – all the systems feel like they were designed by an off shoot of the soviet government.
The only bright spot is the DHS has been almost human since I got a valid visa and the almost polite “welcome back sir” is nice after 10 hours on a plane. Don’t get me started on the airports once past them though.
In all countries it feels like freedom is a fiction maintained by our ability to accept and understand the needs of each and the individual. The more we lose that, the less, as Philip K Dick was prone to say, human we become.
Actually there are quite a few people on the ‘western’ side of the pond that find this behavior sickening and it does seem to be becoming more and more ‘common.
Spy on and turn in/report on your neighbors ‘behavior.
Yep.
Soon, they can have children turning in their parents ( oops, that’s already happened !!! ).
Also, it seems every town in this country, at least according to their police chiefs, NEEDS a SWAT team !!!!!
That way they get money ( ours ) to purchase all kinds of fun toys
( from full auto – quasi tanks in some cases ),most of which, while not outright denied to we commoners, still require incredible amounts of money/patience/hoop jumping to acquire.
Sadly, I think the ‘war on drugs’ has been perverted to the point that it is used to justify almost ANY action by ANY ‘authority’ ( & no, I am not a drug user ). Almost any atrocity could probably be commited by screaming ‘we thought he had/used/was manufacturing drugs and the general populace says
‘ Oh, in that case it’s OK !
Nevermind that the ‘informant’ was an addict was saying what he thought might get his rearend out of trouble.
In addition, it seems, to me anyway, that police forces increasingly attract persons who have high aggressive tendencies and low frustration levels causing extreme overreaction to situations that could be handled quite calmly. ( There are numerous cases of this available on the net )
I sometimes wonder just what it would take to cause a ‘tipping’ and subsequent outcry to ‘STOP THIS #$%^&*’.
My fear is that, given fresh clean water from the tap, a fridge full of beer, big screen television and delivered pizza, the ‘contiment’ level is high enough so that there will never be that outcry.
Trouble with militarising the police is that you turn people who may be perfectly reasonable policemen into what can only be described as soldiers.
There *IS* a time and a place for SWAT teams, no doubt about it, but when their use becomes routine (busting poker players for christsake?), something is very very badly wrong.
Hey, at least they managed to find who they were looking for. That’s more than I can say for the local Keystone Cops in my town that managed to surround a house for five hours that their suspect wasn’t even in.
Story
Going after armed murderers is a legitimate function of a SWAT team. Sadly, they don’t appear to be any good at it. It’s no wonder they go after easier prey like gamblers and prostitutes.
Before I get too far gone let me just say that I have no problem with the police having assault rifles, tanks, and helicopters. They are all fine tools that any sane crime fighter would covet. What I do have a problem with is the dual justice system that treats police officers and “civilians” differently.
If a police officer is suspected of committing a crime he is not picked up by the local constabulary, taken before a magistrate, and either granted or denied bail. Instead he is given “paid administrative leave” i.e. given a check and told to stay home and watch daytime soaps. The case is then investigated by the police’s Internal Investigations unit to determine if he should be turned over to the real judicial system or if the whole matter should be handled “in-house” i.e. by all his friends and buddies.
Anyone remember the incident a while back where an off duty Chicago cop violently assaulted a female bartender 1/3rd his weight? Here is the story in case anyone needs a refresher.
The police tried to do the whole He’s one of ours so we’ll give him a punishment bit and promptly slapped him on the wrist for being a naughty boy. Thankfully, since every news station in the country was airing the security camera footage of Jabba the Hutt assaulting Princess Leia the prosecutors wisely stepped in and demanded he be tired like a normal scumbag. Sadly, even the prosecutors pussied out and only charged him with felony aggravated battery instead of what he normally would have been changed with for stomping on someones head, which is attempted murder.
Completely agree with jerry: No doubt about it – the War on Drugs is largely to blame for all this. Virtually anything can be excused in the USA so long as it’s justified by “protecting children from drugs.” It’s sickening what a softball large segments of the public throw the drug warriors.
I think this explains a good deal of the complacency about the obvious violations of our civil liberties as well. Let’s face it, this kind of a police raid is genuinely frightening. Admitting that we have a problem here means people have to deal with the day-to-day reality that they could be the next target. What they prefer to do instead is console themselves by saying “well, *I’m* not a drug user, so it won’t happen to *me*.” After awhile, this becomes such a mental pattern that it’s hard to process counterexamples such as this raid that have nothing whatever to do with drugs. All this does, of course, is illustrate the importance of sticking to priniple even before you are in the victim class. We should’ve had the Drug War stopped decades ago.
The worst casualty of all of this is the child that was taken away from her parents in this raid. (I’m pretty sure it was a girl but am too lazy to click the link and check.) It completely defies credulity that being exposed to a low-stakes is going to be such a terrible influence on this child’s mental and ethical development that the state needs to whisk her away and put her under its care. No doubt she will be reunited with her parents in short order – but the point is that it COULD well have been otherwise – she COULD have been condemned to an upbringing in a foster home or a state children’s home just because her parents played a little poker.
It has indeed gotten way out of hand.
You have to understand that SWAT gear is probably
the best choice, as, in the US, if someone comes crashing through your door “unannounced” (known as no-knock-warrant, absolutely unnecessary in
cases like this) the occupants are rightfully entitled to start blasting away in the general direction of the assault,
making no distinction of who the push in intruder, or their company, is.
And yes, cheap training exercise. Sadly, legally rebuffed “social” service folk, with some sense of impotent scorn,
have recently decided to initiate such “rescue” missions “for the sake of the children”, just to let folks know penis envy runs rampant in the public “service” sector.
Perry,
I am not sure I agree that militarization has that effect on the police. Rather, I think militarization has the effect of drawing in people who were too weak-willed to serve in the military in dangerous occupations such as the infantry, but who want the “glamor” of being a real bad-ass soldier. One thing is for sure, and that’s that the militarization has only come in the form of greater firepower and more dangerous tactics. The professionalism that the U.S. Army displays in combat zones, along with the recon work it is expected to perform are sorely lacking in our militarized police forces. Heads would role in the military if our servicemen victimized innocent parties or used such poor judgment the way that many SWAT units routinely seem to do (such as going in hot and heavy to catch a pothead dealing cards while his wife and kids are inside in the room that is to be raided).
One commenter on my blog had a great idea for how to fix this: make each cop’s ability to carry a weapon in public contingent on them holding the state’s carry or concealed carry license. That way, if they break the law even once, the matter is referred to the same people who would disarm a normal citizen, not police shooting review boards which are very lax in dealing with bad cops most of the time. The positive side for left-liberals in this is that you could make concealed carry permits contingent on the same range training that most police get, which would result in a better baseline of citizens with concealed carry licenses (and would ultimately help to further tear apart the argument that gun owners are poorly trained).
CaptDMO,
That’s not true. If the police identify themselves as they’re busting down the door you don’t have any right to do anything but comply with their demands. There are people on death row right now who can attest to this.
In general I agree with what most of the commenters have said. I’m a resident of the People’s Republic. There certainly is a time for the SWAT team, but the “S” stands for “special”, as in “out of the ordinary, rare”. Maybe they should call them WAT teams.
The way police officers are trained these days is “maximum safety for the officers at whatever cost”. That means being in 100% control of the situation. So when they approach a group of potential gang members, instead of talking first they put everyone’s face down in the dirt, search for drugs and weapons, and then start talking. This has a pretty predictable effect on community relations.
The war on drugs is part of it, as others have pointed out. Another part is the draconian sentences you get for pretty much everything these days. If you’re looking at 25 to life for robbing a liquor store you’ll be much more willing to take extraordinary, i.e. violent, measures to avoid capture. There’s a video on liveleak showing a crazy Dutch guy stabbing his ex-wife twenty times or so, a crime for which he got four years. You’d never again see the outside of prison if you did that in California.
I favor abolishing all SWAT teams, for the simple fact that there is no way to control their jurisdiction, once created. No legislator is going to vote to narrow SWAT powers, and any citizen activist is likely to be harassed into silence.
“TO PROTECT AND SERVE” indeed.
On a somewhat related note. I have two simple questions to ask. It’s just an experiment. On a leftist blog, I asked these same questions to some of the commenters and none of them answered them. In fact a poster named “truth machine” either was unable or unwilling to answer such easy questions.
The questions are as follows:
By having a vast preponderance of force at its disposal.
Ah yes, I recall that from school days (daze?). Louis XIV…Oratio Ultima Regem. His motto was on French cannon. See answer to the previous question.
“Trouble with militarising the police is that you turn people who may be perfectly reasonable policemen into what can only be described as soldiers.”
Soldiers minus the required training and discipline that comes with the job. Add to that high power weapons and what you essentially have is a criminal (insufficient discipline, trigger-happy etc.) . I agree with the point on Cali being a pseudo socialist republic , the court system being a real bone of contention. But I notice a correlation to citizens’ willingness to give up arms and an increasing militirisation of the police. This is evident I also believe of New York, but especially Canada (where I live).
I ask:
Perry de Havilland answers:
I ask:
Perry de Havilland answers:
BINGO!!!!! Thank you.
The damned leftists on the pharyngula blog couldn’t even answer them!
Quenton:
I do have a problem with them, and we are clearly operating with different definitions of ‘sanity’. Military weapons and tactics are necessary to an occupation force that has to keep in check a hostile population, not to enforcers of laws that reflect sane social norms. Militarization of law enforcement reflects the fact that the laws are increasingly losing touch with reality to the point where they are facing opposition so heavy that it must be answered by weapons and tactics normally used only by hostile occupational armies against insurgents.
Of course, you might argue that without paramilitary forces, the law enforcement would be helpless if some criminals organized themselves in a well-armed and disciplined paramilitary unit. But I say, if this happens, call in the actual army, and don’t pretend that such operations are supposed to be a routine part of law enforcement in a peaceful and sane society.
Any other state of affairs is unfortunately a utopian idea. Law enforcement is a small and closely-knit group of people, and it would be absurd to expect that they won’t collude to act in their common interest.
Expecting good answers from pharyngula’s commenters was your first mistake, Robert.
MikeT said:
What, really? But I thought it was a “science” blog! Isn’t there supposed to be logic present there?
/Sarc
Yeah I know. But it was quite amusing though.
Perry de Havilland:
Um… I hate to nitpick, but regem is the accusative case of rex, and this phrase would make sense only if ‘king’ was in genitive (“argument of the king“). 🙂 Judging by the Google results, this grammatically wrong form of the phrase has proliferated quite a bit, while the closest correct form (oratio ultima regis) gets no hits. Oratio ultima regum would also make sense grammatically, but it gets only one hit.
Dude, I am doing that from memory at somewhat past 2 in the morning after last seeing it in a text book at school, oh, probably in 1978. The fact I am even close is a minor miracle.
Oh, I just wanted to prevent an incorrect meme from spreading (incorrect Latin is one of my personal pet peeves). 🙂 It wasn’t meant to put you down; my apologies if it sounded like that.
DON (I believe) commented that opening a bank account or getting a driving license is more unpleasant in the US than in the UK. Perhaps this a a function of being an obvious foreigner more than anything else.
When I moved to Dublin and then London I found opening bank accounts very trying. Never mind the driving license people in Dublin: nightmare.
As for arming / militarizing the police, the answer is clear: the more weapons / toys you give them, the worse class of people they attract. I’ve been arrested in the US, the UK, and RoIRL. The Irish guys have a charmingly sarcastic attitude but never a hint that they might like to really hurt you. The boys in Harlesdon hit me with the pepper spray and cracked me in the head with a baton (I deserved it…), but they didn’t follow through at the jail and they gave me tea. In the US? Shit. No resistance, no cooperation = pissing blood. These were sheriff Joe’s boys so you expect no less. If I acted the maggot here in AZ like I did in London, I wouldn’t be posting here.
BTW, I wrote the guys at Queen’s park station a sincere apology for being an asshole. They didn’t deserve to be treated like that.
I don’t get arrested anymore.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
The pattern keeps repeating! Remember the posters in pharyngula refusing to answer my two questions:
Another collectivist poster-YogiBarrister- posting on the excellent libertarian blog, “classical values” is also fulfilling the pattern. The poster refuses to answer these questions correctly too.
loathsome, but a bit better than getting busted for sex with a bicycle.
and for your gun/knife laws, jeez. I fully expect in a few years you’ll have to take your turkey to a government office to get it carved and pick up your government issue eating utensil . While you’re handing over you deadly chefs knife you will turn in your video games and pick up your government approved copy of Ecco the Dolphin
http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5387
This article is encouraging, regarding the war on drugs front in the US.
“Policing pot in Colorado is about to get a lot more complicated. The kick-in-the-door raids SWAT teams have long employed could now cost cities hundreds of thousands of dollars following two landmark court decisions upholding the state’s constitutional protection of medical marijuana. Under the rulings, police departments are required to return any marijuana and paraphernalia taken from state-sanctioned growers, and can be sued by those growers if the crops aren’t preserved.”
Police officers ARE civilians. I realize you used sarcasm quotes but I don’t think it can be repeated often enough. That is one of my pet peeves.
I suspect this is true. Many (not all) of the SWAT guys I have met wouldn’t have lasted long in the infantry.
The implication in that slogan is that police protect and serve the people, when in reality, it is the State that is their master. Many people have discovered that the hard way.
This is because the citizens have been convinced(?) that they have no need of arms for self defense. They abrogated their responsibility to defend themselves; the “professional” police forces will do that for them. Of course, this is an impossible promise to keep, but since when has that ever stopped them? Now they will need to have heavily armed cops and cameras on every corner to “protect” you, since they took away your means of protecting yourself. If they screw up and fail to protect you, well, too bad. As much as they try, they can’t be everywhere you know! So many poker games, so few SWAT officers…
“Before I get too far gone let me just say that I have no problem with the police having assault rifles, tanks, and helicopters. They are all fine tools that any sane crime fighter would covet.
I do have a problem with them, and we are clearly operating with different definitions of ‘sanity’. Military weapons and tactics are necessary to an occupation force that has to keep in check a hostile population, not to enforcers of laws that reflect sane social norms. ”
Ivan, you clearly have no idea whatsoever the nature of modern military small arms – and how little they differ from regular weapons such as the ones sitting in my closet. (I will add that “tanks” in this context means light armored personell carriers, not actual tanks with armament) Furthermore, SWAT tactics are NOT military tactics. Not even close.
Now, granted, the overuse and abuse of SWAT teams is a serious problem, but it’s a serious problem that is generating plenty of outrage, resentment, and attention. It will be dealt with, eventually.
However, to cast a blanket denouncement over certain types of weapons shows a serious ignorance of police work and the States in general. Sending a police car out on the street without, at a minimum, an AR-15 rifle in the trunk is well past incompetence and bordering on negligence.
Sometimes you need more than a warm fuzzy “enforcement of sane social norms”. A pistol is useless in the hands of most past 15 or 20m; the same person should have no fear of missing a precision shot at 100m with a rifle. The majority of police here are good people doing a difficult and dangerous job at our behest; I want them to have the right tools for when everything goes to hell. If you know you might get into a fight, bringing a pistol instead of a rifle is insane.
Those over in the UK always get resentful when we point this out, but …. all your efforts at comparing freedoms becomes moot when you lose one of the most basic ones. If things truly turn ugly there, what are you going to do, throw beer glasses at them? Make all the noise you like, it still sounds like “baaa, baaa” from over here.
And a point so obvious it was easy to leave out – I do not expect law enforcement to give me a hard time for owning or carrying an AR-15 (and they never have, mind you), so why should I tell them they cannot?
Tim in TX:
Obviously, they are very different in that military tactics are usually indifferent to killing off the enemy, whereas the police tactics do make a significant effort to capture them alive (plus a number of other obvious differences, of course). However, when the use of SWAT and similar units is understood as a regular part of everyday law enforcement, rather than something that is called for only in very exceptional circumstances, there is a fundamental shared assumption with anti-guerrilla military strategy — the assumption that the country is full of well-armed and well-organized enemy cells that frequently have to be countered and destroyed with overwhelming force. If this is true, then it can mean only two things: either a large part of the population is inherently hostile to the present government (e.g. if it’s perceived as an illegitimate occupier), or the laws being enforced are so insane that they’re facing widespread violent opposition.
I know very well what the differences between handguns and rifles are. But here you basically assume that encountering serious violent opposition is something that law enforcement agents can expect to happen on a regular basis. If this is the case where you live, then I agree that it would be insane for the cops to go around without (relatively) heavy weapons and armor, and to be unable to rapidly call for even more heavily equipped and military-like reinforcements. However, is such a situation really unavoidable, or is it a product of bad laws and bad policies? Historically, there have been places and times in which the job of a cop, while certainly more dangerous and demanding than most, didn’t include a significant probability of “everything going to hell”, and where a typical cop definitely wouldn’t go on his daily duty with the mentality of an occupational soldier who has to treat the folks around him as potentially posing a significant threat. Such places arguably still exist nowadays. If the law enforcement is becoming increasingly violent and militarized, I doubt that it’s because the population is becoming more evil and savage; a much more plausible explanation is that the laws are becoming increasingly out of touch with reality. By this, of course, I have in mind primarily the drug war.
That isnt anything new. They did that shit to an optomatrist[sp] in Georgia. One of the officer’s guns went off “accidentally” and killed the guy. The guy was squeaky clean besides his card games. Its down right criminal.
Just for the sake of accuracy: that same first-hand-account guy says that it was not a SWAT. Regardless, the mere fact that police storm ahome because people are playing poker there is unsettling, to say the least.
Ivan:
How about both?:-)
I can’t believe I’m about to post in this thread.
Wrong. I’ve arrested another cop, once. (3rd degree assault[1], domestic violence.) He ended up pleading, taking the plea deal offered to everybody else with the same charge and no previous record, and is now in other employment.
You’re conflating two separate things:
1) When a cop is accused of a crime, the matter is (usually) investigated by whichever department has jurisdiction over that particular location. Until charges are filed, it’s relatively uncommon for his employing department to act.
2) When the allegation is that he violated his department’s own policies, then it’s investigated internally. He may be placed on leave at that point. “Paid” vs. “Unpaid” depends on how credible the evidence is against him.
How would you want your employer to behave if you get accused of doing something bad on your own time? More to the point, how would you want your employer to handle it if the very nature of your employment resulted in getting a couple of bullshit complaints each year?
Ivan:
Which ‘military weapons and tactics’ do you mean?
And, as an item of rumor control: no children were kidnapped. A child was removed from the home after her parents were arrested, and IMMEDIATELY TRANSPORTED TO OTHER RELATIVES. As of the last time I looked, there have been no efforts to ‘take the child away’ or terminate parental rights or impose DSS supervision or any of that happy horseshit.
I forgot, though, it’s more fun to yell about JBT SHOT MY DOG!
Next time I think about answering one of these threads, someone needs to slap me.