Next: Sunspots and Human Behavior
From: Alan on 5 Feb 2006 12:32
Don't laugh. Maybe cry. But the next time your local police come to
your house to serve a warrant - of any kind - they might also kill you.

==================

"Overkill: The Latest Trend in Policing"
The Washington Post, Outlook
Sunday, February 5, 2006; B08

On Jan. 24, a SWAT team in Fairfax [Virginia] shot and killed Salvatore
J. Culosi Jr., an optometrist who was under investigation for gambling.
According to a Jan. 26 front-page story in The Post, Culosi had emerged
from his home to meet an undercover officer when a police tactical unit
swarmed around him. An officer's gun discharged, killing the suspect.
Culosi, police said, was unarmed and had displayed no threatening
behavior.

It's unlikely that the officer who shot Culosi did so intentionally.
But it's also unlikely that the investigation into this shooting will
address why police sent a military-style unit to arrest an optometrist
under investigation for a nonviolent crime and why the officers had
their guns drawn when approaching a man with no history of violence.

This isn't the first time a SWAT team in Virginia has killed someone
while serving a gambling warrant. In 1998 a team in Virginia Beach
conducted a 3 a.m. raid at a private club believed to be involved in
organized gambling. Security guard Edward C. Reed was sitting in a
parked car outside the club, which had been robbed a few months
earlier.

As the black-clad police team raided, a few officers confronted Reed,
who had fallen asleep. Reid awoke and, probably startled by the sight
of armed men outside his car, reached for his gun. The SWAT team shot
and killed him. Reed's last words were, "Why did you shoot me? I was
reading a book."

During the past 15 years, The Post and other media outlets have
reported on the unsettling "militarization" of police departments
across the country. Armed with free surplus military gear from the
Pentagon, SWAT teams have multiplied at a furious pace. Tactics once
reserved for rare, volatile situations such as hostage takings, bank
robberies and terrorist incidents increasingly are being used for
routine police work.

Eastern Kentucky University's Peter Kraska -- a widely cited expert on
police militarization -- estimates that SWAT teams are called out about
40,000 times a year in the United States; in the 1980s, that figure was
3,000 times a year. Most "call-outs" were to serve warrants on
nonviolent drug offenders.

That statistic is troubling enough, but it is compounded by the raids,
particularly in drug cases, being based on tips from notoriously
unreliable informants, often with no corroborating investigation. This
leads to the "wrong address" raids we frequently hear about in the
news.

Now police military-style units are increasingly being deployed on
gambling raids, too. Last November, police with guns and K-9 units
raided a charity poker game in Baltimore. Police in New York are using
similar tactics against gambling clubs. Last April, a SWAT team of 52
officers raided a small-stakes poker game in a Denver suburb. An
alternative weekly, the Cleveland Scene, reported last year that
Jaycees and American Legion clubs in northeastern Ohio "are being
raided with the kind of firepower once reserved for drug barons and
killers on the lam."

These gambling crackdowns carry a whiff of hypocrisy. Even as it sends
SWAT teams to protect citizens from the scourge of gambling, Virginia
spends $20 million a year promoting its state lottery. As police in
Ohio knock over private poker games, the Ohio Lottery pulled in $2.15
billion in 2005. And while Maryland police have been busting charity
tournaments, the state's lottery cashes in on the poker craze with
scratch-off games such as Royal Flush, Aces & 8s and Poker Showdown.

Fairfax apparently serves all of its search warrants with SWAT teams.
But officials and county residents need to ask themselves if they want
to live in a community in which routine police work and vice warrants
are carried out by officers armed with gear more appropriate to a
battlefield. Their answer may determine whether Salvatore Culosi
represents an accident or a trend.

-- Radley Balko
is a policy analyst
for the Cato Institute.
rbalko(a)cato.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302389.
html

Alan

"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."

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