Any proof that giving a department military style gear will suddenly make the individual officers "trigger happy" ??
"Local Police, Armed with the Weapons of War, Too Often Mistakenly Shoot and Kill
Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was sleeping on the couch next to her grandmother when a SWAT team threw a “flashbang” through the window of her Detroit, Michigan home. The “flashbang” – a stun grenade originally developed for wartime raids – immediately set fire to Aiyana’s blanket. Seconds later, the SWAT team stormed through the door, and confused by the deafening and blinding effects of the “flashbang,” mistakenly shot Aiyana through the neck, killing her.
Questions abound in the wake of this 2010 tragedy. Did the Detroit police truly need amped-up military equipment routinely used in nighttime raids in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did access to the tools and tactics of a combat theater unnecessarily encourage more aggressive policing? If the police had not used a “flashbang,” would Aiyana still be alive?
Aiyana’s sad story is just one piece of evidence showing that our state and local police departments are becoming increasingly militarized – too often with devastating consequences. This trend is worrisome because wartime weapons and counter-terrorism strategies mark a shift in the very nature of policing strategies – and policing should be about community protection, and not about combat.
If the anecdotal evidence is any indication, tanks and counter-terrorism strategies encourage overly aggressive policing. SWAT teams have become a key part of increasingly militarized policing strategies. While only a fraction of SWAT-style raids result in actual charges of any kind, they often provoke fear, hurt individuals and families, and result in damages to personal property.
Take for example a SWAT raid in Arizona that went tragically awry. Dressed in full riot gear and toting massive rifles, a SWAT team attempted to serve a search warrant at an Iraq war veteran’s home as part of a multi-house drug crackdown. Jose Guerena’s wife became alarmed when she saw a shadowy figure standing in their front yard holding a gun. Jose instructed his family to hide in the bedroom closet, picked up his own gun – leaving the safety on – and stepped into the living room. Seconds later, he was dead – the SWAT team shot him 60 times. Representatives for the SWAT team defended shooting an Iraq War veteran 60 times – even after retracting their claim that Jose shot first – although they have declined to say whether they found any drugs in Jose’s house.
Through federal grant programs, state and local police departments have virtually unlimited access to military equipment and training at no cost. Although these wartime tools and tactics are free for cops, Aiyana’s and Jose’s stories remind us that there is great cost to communities....."
03/06/2013
By Kara Dansky, Senior Counsel, ACLU Center for Justice & Sarah Solon, Communications Strategist, ACLU
"The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects."
Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America | Cato Institute
"...In 2006, a SWAT team dressed in riot gear descended upon a small group of Tibetan monks in Iowa on a peace mission because they had overstayed their visa.[2] When Texas Hold ’Em became increasingly popular in the mid-2000s, police in many parts of the country sent tactical units to break up tournaments in private clubs, bars, and residences, regardless of whether they were high-stakes games or friendly games with $20 dollar buy-ins. In 2007, a Dallas SWAT team raided a Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost for hosting charity poker games. Elderly players were terrified—one urinated on herself.[3]
In a particularly tragic story, Sal Culosi, a 37-year-old optometrist, forged a fatal friendship with David Baucum, a police detective in Fairfax County, Virginia. Baucum overheard Culosi placing a small bet with friends on a college football game at a local bar. During the next several months, Baucum, acting undercover, befriended Culosi and started making bets with him, constantly encouraging Culosi to raise the stakes until he believed he had enough evidence to charge Culosi with “conducting an illegal gambling operation.” Baucum called Culosi and said he would drop by to collect his winnings from their latest bet, but when Culosi, who was unarmed, answered the door, he was shot dead by a SWAT team member with an itchy trigger finger.[4]
Police departments have even started sending in SWAT teams to enforce regulatory laws. From August through October of 2010, heavily armed deputies raided several barbershops in the Orlando area, holding barbers and customers at gun point and handcuffing some of them. They made more than 37 arrests. The basis for the arrests was barbering without a license.[5] Fully armed SWAT teams in Massachusetts have charged into bars and college fraternities holding people at gunpoint while investigating reports of underage drinking. In 2010, a SWAT team with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raided a Pennsylvania farm because a farmer had allegedly shipped unpasteurized milk to customers across state lines.[6] More recently, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources used helicopters to locate a baby deer and later sent 13 armed agents to capture the deer, which was being kept at a no-kill animal shelter...."
Overmilitarization: Why Law Enforcement Needs to Scale Down Its Use of Military Hardware and Tactics
An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids," by Radley Balko is available at
http://www.cato.org/raidmap
4 shocking examples of police militarization in America’s small towns - Salon.com
Former Cops Speak Out About Police Militarization