I recently read an article called the “Rise of the Warrior Cop” in the Wall Street Journal. Ordinarily, I would tend to blow off an article such as this.
Except there are too many articles like these:
- Death of Aiyana Jones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Aiyana_Jones
- The Doraville, GA, police department has an armored vehicle and a SWAT team for a town with slightly over 8,300 residents
- The Department of Education SWAT raid:
- http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-team-up
- The Washington Post’s take here: Education Department agents raids California home
- Local news reporting here: http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=141108
- Let’s not forget Gibson’s Guitars … purveyors of rosewood and ebony fingerboards on guitars … http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/gibson-guitars-exotic-wood_n_1747507.html
- And the story of the Tibetan monks on a peace mission to the US arrested by a SWAT team when their church sponsor revoked their visas at http://www.ketv.com/Monks-Arrested-In-SWAT-Team-Action/-/9675214/10073774/-/13mbrtfz/-/index.html
- You can read more details about SWAT teams shooting dogs, harassing a farmer selling unpasteurized milk, not allowing a diabetic child to take her medicine causing her to go into a diabetic coma, and shooting citizens protecting their homes … http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340268/and-your-little-dog-too-deroy-murdock/page/0/1
Reasonable search and seizure? It’s supposed to be a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
Intentional Privacy 