I don't ever remember Eurocentric Americans...

[DaGip]

...ever going through immigration or border check points. I recommend shipping all European Americans back to the Caucasus Mountains. There they can finally find their cult-minded, patriarchal, misogynistic utopia.

[Steiner75]

Really not that bad over here you can travel inside the Schengen Area (420 million people living there) from the polar circle in Norway to the Strait of Gibraltar in Spain without ever having to go through immigration or being stopped at a checkpoint. And if police pulls you over, you can be pretty sure not to be beaten or accidentally shot 23 times...

[KoolBak]

And if police pulls you over, you can be pretty sure not to be beaten or accidentally shot 23 times..



So where CAN'T you be "pretty sure" not to be beaten or shot?

Assuming you're badmouthing us (again), estimates from the US Dept of Justice indicate that approx 500-1,000 civilians are killed in face to face contact with police a year. There are approx 40 million occurrences / contacts per year. I put that at a .0025% chance of death.....I'll take those odds

[Steiner75]

So where CAN'T you be "pretty sure" not to be beaten or shot?

OK, ND is probably comparatively safe to say DC or Detroit

Assuming you're badmouthing us (again), estimates from the US Dept of Justice indicate that approx 500-1,000 civilians are killed in face to face contact with police a year. There are approx 40 million occurrences / contacts per year. I put that at a .0025% chance of death.....I'll take those odds

Far from that, just looking at the numbers:

Fatal police shootings in Germany (pop. approx 81 million)
2011: 6
2012: 8
Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland#cite_note-15

and our police is really quite "violent" compared to the UK (pop approx. 64 million). Fatal police shootings there:
2011/12: 2
2012/13: 0
Source: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/deaths-during-or-following-police-contact

[KoolBak]

My bad Knee-jerk paranoid uhmeruhkin reaction

[Dukasaur]

My bad Knee-jerk paranoid uhmeruhkin reaction

Worth reading: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/silveira146.html

Some excepts:

"Originally, they were sold to the public as a strategy for dealing with high-risk situations that might put law enforcement and the public at risk, things like hostage situations, snipers, and the gang tactics such as were used by rioters during the Watts Riots in Los Angeles in 1965. And they were supposed to be available for what we're now calling terrorist threats."

"There's nothing wrong with that," I said.

"There wouldn't be if that's what SWAT teams had stayed limited to. But like the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act) — which allows seizure of private property and which we were told was only going to be used against drug kingpins, but now is used to seize private property, even in the case of petty crimes — the original intent of SWAT teams has now been blurred and, more and more, they're used to perform everyday police work. They're used to serve search warrants that, just a few decades ago, were done by ... well, the kinds of cops you have here in Curry County, Oregon.

"Cops used to knock on your door, announce who they were, present the warrant, then conduct a search or make an arrest. Nowadays, SWAT teams are executing what are known as 'no-knock' warrants. That is, they don't knock and announce themselves, and the first time you know they're there is when they're busting down your door or blowing it off its hinges with explosive charges and, often, it's after they've thrown concussion and flash grenades through your windows to disorient you. And they charge in wearing flak jackets and masks and carrying M16 rifles. All too often this happens just before dawn when you're asleep and you're going to be disoriented anyway."

"That sounds like a recipe for disaster," Dave said.

"You'll see it is," Mac promised and continued. "They then ransack the premises, often causing thousands of dollars in damage for which they don't feel responsible and for which you may never be compensated, even if they find nothing or, worse, if they have the wrong address — and that happens more often than you think."

Before either of us could interrupt, he said, "And maybe we could excuse it if they were only used in pursuit of dangerous criminals. But more often they're being used for mundane police work: enforcing misdemeanor-type laws like selling unpasteurized milk, closing unlicensed barbershops, or taking motherless fawns away from animal shelters. A SWAT team raid was even staged to enforce music copyright law."

"We also ignored the fact that, nationwide, since the '80s, law enforcement agencies that wanted SWAT teams began stocking up on those military-grade weapons and equipment. They're now getting tens of billions of dollars of surplus military equipment, either free or at steeply discounted prices, from the federal government, stuff you'd expect to only find in a war zone. They're getting M16s, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers and bayonets, helicopters ... "

Dave interrupted: "Grenade launchers! Bayonets! What the hell do cops need those for?"

Mac continued: "And this stuff isn't necessarily going to urban areas where most middle class Americans might have expected them to be deployed in anticipation of the next major riots. Much of it goes to suburban and even rural police forces where crime is practically nonexistent."

"And while it may seem comforting for most Americans to know that the police forces have all this stuff in case there is a major riot or al Qaeda storms our shores, the fact is, while we're waiting for the riots and jihads, they're being used against us."

"But the War on Terror is a big threat today," I said.

"There are so few terrorists and terrorist threats in this country that the police, particularly the FBI, have taken to entrapping crazy people to keep the so-called threat alive. Look at the history of most of the terrorist plots they break up. A common theme running through them is law enforcement. For example, the FBI finds some young guys, often young minority men, who have nothing to do and time on their hands. They 'infiltrate' the group with one or more operatives who whip these guys up to do something they hadn't thought of on their own and would not have been able to carry out without some law enforcement agency prodding them and providing them with supplies. Then, at the last minute, they bust the guys for something that was never going to happen and toot their own horns for 'stopping' them."

"Another argument law enforcement has given for military-grade weapons and tactics in these raids is that they reduce the chances of violence. The problem with that explanation is that those tactics aren't just used to raid crack houses, they're also used in raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, doctors' offices, and even high schools where there's almost no chance of violence unless the police precipitate it themselves. Furthermore, because they're frequently used to raid homes of minor drug offenders, with grenades going off and the front door being broken down by men who rush in screaming and swearing, the natural first reaction of many gun owners is to grab a gun and shoot. Some do and someone gets killed. Sometimes it's one of the residents, sometimes it's one of the cops. What's worse is when the raiders have the wrong address. They enter like it's a home invasion by hoodlums and sometimes kill someone who's innocent, who's just trying to protect his or her home from unknown intruders.

"It's been noted, by the way, that when these ninja-clad warriors have mistakenly invaded a house where a cop or former cop lives, the first instinct of the cop residing there is to ... "

"Grab a gun, just like the rest of us gun owners," Dave said, finishing Mac's sentence.

I interrupted. "But doesn't it make sense that people should check, first, to make sure it's cops and not criminals breaking into their houses?"

"Balko points out that in New York City alone, more than 1,000 times a year home invaders identify themselves as law enforcement when they come crashing into homes. And there's at least one case of a woman talking with a police dispatcher, begging for help because gang members were trying to break in. Then she said, 'Wait, they just said they're the FBI.' So she let the imposters in. She's dead, now. Waiting to find out if it's criminals or aggressive cops coming through your door can get you or your family members killed."

"Economics?" I asked incredulously.

"It's part of the story, John. Though a lot of the municipalities and agencies got the military equipment for very little or nothing, once it's in their hands, the costs start piling up because it's expensive to train cops to use it and a lot of it is expensive to maintain."

"So, I'm going to guess," Dave said, "that a contributing factor to the increased use of SWAT teams is because there's a sense of 'use it or lose it.'"

"Bingo! If all that stuff is just sitting there, piling up bills and gathering dust because there are no hostage situations, no roving gangs of jihadists, and no drug-crazed gangs barricading themselves in bunkers, then what's your excuse for keeping it, even if you got it for free?

"So, to justify having it, they start sending them out every time they want to serve a warrant, and they send them out for more and more things that you wouldn't think they'd be needed for."

"Balko writes about the killing of an unarmed Virginia optometrist who had been entrapped into betting 'too much.' The cop who started it, Fairfax County detective David Baucum, overheard a 38-year-old optometrist, Sal Culosi, making sports bets with his friends at a local bar. Baucum apparently couldn't find enough serious crime to pursue, so he decided to create some victimless crimes. To make a long story short, he befriended Culosi, then spent the next several months ... months," he emphasized, " ... getting Culosi to raise the stakes on the bets until they exceeded the limit allowed under a Commonwealth of Virginia law, a law the optometrist was unaware of. Then, Baucum called Culosi telling him he was going to come out to his house to give him the payoff. But he showed up with a SWAT team and ... "

"Wait a minute," Dave interrupted, "they showed up with ... what'd they need a SWAT team for?"

"Let me finish," Mac said. "Culosi came out of his house, unarmed, barefoot, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, had no criminal history, and no history of violence, and one of the cops, Detective Deval Bullock, 'accidentally' killed Culosi. Bullock said the gun went off in his hands when the door to his police vehicle allegedly hit his arm. For that, you or I would go to prison, accident or not. But Bullock's total punishment was that he was suspended for three weeks without pay."

"Just this last summer in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources was informed that a no-kill animal shelter had taken in an abandoned fawn ... maybe a fawn whose mother was hit by a car. They scouted the place, even using aerial surveillance, then stormed the shelter with 13 armed officers to get the deer."

"They couldn't just send a cop out and knock on the door or have made a call asking them to turn over the fawn?" I asked. "They needed a SWAT team?"

"When asked why they didn't do just that, a police spokesman rationalized the raid, by more or less saying, 'We don't knock on the door and ask drug dealers to turn over their drugs, so why should we knock on the door and ask for the deer?' I'm paraphrasing that, of course, but that response is symptomatic of the mentality and attitude too many police agencies use to justify the use of their SWAT teams."

"So, what did they do with the motherless fawn?" I asked. "Let it go even though it didn't have its mother to look after it anymore?"

"They euthanized it."

[KoolBak]

A buddy of mine is 20 year veteran swat..hell of a good guy...his job has gotten so political, stressful, underfunded and overabused that he is taking early retirement at decreased bennies just to get away and avoid a fucking heart attack....sad.