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OVERKILL THE RISE OF PARAMILITARY POLICE RAIDS IN AMERICA RADLEY BALKO

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Page 1: Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in Americaresearch.policyarchive.org/5806.pdf · paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT)

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Studies from the

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OVERKILLTHERISE

OFPARAMILITARYPOLICERAIDS

INAMERICA

RADLEYBALKO

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Page 3: Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in Americaresearch.policyarchive.org/5806.pdf · paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT)

View the interactive map that accompanies this paper atwww.cato.org/raidmap

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Copyright © 2006 by the Cato Institute.All rights reserved.

Cover design by Jon Meyers.

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Americans have long maintained that a man’shome is his castle and that he has the right todefend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortun-ately, that right may be disappearing. Over thelast 25 years, America has seen a disturbing mili-tarization of its civilian law enforcement, alongwith a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use ofparamilitary police units (most commonly calledSpecial Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for rou-tine police work. The most common use of SWATteams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usual-ly with forced, unannounced entry into thehome.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 peryear by one estimate, are needlessly subjectingnonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and

wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of havingtheir homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usu-ally by teams of heavily armed paramilitary unitsdressed not as police officers but as soldiers.These raids bring unnecessary violence andprovocation to nonviolent drug offenders, manyof whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. Theraids terrorize innocents when police mistakenlytarget the wrong residence. And they have result-ed in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, notonly of drug offenders, but also of police officers,children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview ofthe issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides anextensive catalogue of abuses and mistakenraids, and offers recommendations for reform.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Radley Balko is a policy analyst for the Cato Institute specializing in civil liberties issues and is the author of the Catostudy, “Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking.”

Executive Summary

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Introduction

“They [police officers] made a mistake.There’s no one to blame for a mistake. Theway these people were treated has to bejudged in the context of a war.”

—Hallandale, Florida, attorney Richard Kane,after police officers conducted a late night drug raidon the home of Edwin and Catherine Bernhardt.Police broke into the couple’s home and threwCatherine Bernhardt to the floor at gunpoint.Edwin Bernhardt, who had come down from hisbedroom in the nude after hearing the commotion,was also subdued and handcuffed at gunpoint.Police forced him to wear a pair of his wife’s under-wear, then took him to the police station, where hespent several hours in jail. Police later discoveredthey had raided the wrong address.1

On August 5, 2005, at 6:15 a.m., a SWATteam converged around the Sunrise, Florida,home of Anthony Diotaiuto. They came toserve a search warrant based on an anony-mous tip and an informant’s purchase of asingle ounce of marijuana from the 23-year-old bartender and part-time student.

Friends acknowledge that Diotaiuto was arecreational marijuana smoker, but theydeny he was a drug dealer in any real sense ofthe term.2 They would later tell the mediathat Diotaiuto had just bought the modesthome with his mother after taking a secondjob and selling off his prized sports car—goodevidence, they say, that he wasn’t running anylucrative criminal enterprise. Also a part-timestudent in community college, Diotaiuto wasdescribed by the parents of one of his friendsas “a gem,” by a neighbor as a “beautiful per-son,” and by others as a churchgoing, family-oriented man.3 He had one previous convic-tion for possession of marijuana, when hewas 16. Otherwise, Diotaiuto had no crimi-nal record, and no history of violence or crim-inal conduct.

By 7 a.m. the raid was over. Police had bro-ken down Diotaiuto’s front door, and turnedhis home upside down looking for drugs,weapons, and drug paraphernalia. Diotaiutolay dead in a bedroom closet. He had 10 bul-

let holes in his head, chest, torso, and limbs.What happened between the time police

arrived at his home and the time AnthonyDiotaiuto’s body arrived at the coroner’s officeis in dispute. Police say they announced them-selves before breaking down Diotaiuto’s door,consistent with the requirements of a “knockand announce” search warrant. Neighbors saythey heard no such announcement.4 The offi-cers who conducted the raid also sayDiotaiuto fled from the living room to thebedroom as the raid commenced, where hearmed himself with a handgun. An investiga-tive committee has yet to issue its final report,but police accounts of the raid have continuedto change. Immediately after the raid, forexample, Lt. Robert Voss, spokesman for theSunrise Police Department, told reporters thatDiotaiuto “had a gun and pointed it at ourofficers.” Later the same day Voss revised, “Inall likelihood, that’s what happened. I knowthere was a weapon found next to the body.”5

Police also found a BB gun, a shotgun, thehandgun in question, and a rifle, all of whichDiotaiuto owned legally. Diotaiuto also hada valid conceal-carry permit for the hand-gun.6

There are nagging questions about theaccount of the Diotaiuto raid given bySunrise police. For example, police say thatDiotaiuto’s concealed-carry permit indicatedhe was potentially dangerous, which necessi-tated the involvement of the SWAT team andthe early-morning raid.7 But common sensesuggests the opposite. Applicants for con-cealed-carry permits in Florida are requiredto fill out a variety of paperwork, undergo acriminal background check and fingerprint-ing, pay a fee, and enroll in a class on gunsafety and firearms law.8 If Diotaiuto were ahardened, professional drug dealer danger-ous enough to merit the use of such over-whelming force, it seems unlikely that he’dgo to the trouble of obtaining a permit for hisguns. Diotaiuto’s permit should have indi-cated to Sunrise police that, if anything,Diotaiuto was more likely a nonviolent, occa-sional drug user, rather than a volatileoffender necessitating use of a SWAT team.

2

Police say thatDiotaiuto’s

concealed-carrypermit indicated

he was potentiallydangerous, which

necessitated theinvolvement of

the SWAT team.

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If, indeed, police had given sufficientnotice of their presence, as mandated by a“knock and announce” warrant, it’s difficultto understand why Diotaiuto’s immediatereaction would be to flee to his bedroom toarm himself, given the small amount of mar-ijuana in his possession. It’s even more diffi-cult to imagine him then knowingly pointinghis weapon at police for such an insignificantamount of the drug. An ounce of marijuanahardly merits a lethal shootout. If Diotaiutowas indeed armed when police entered hishome, it seems more likely that his neigh-bors’ account is correct: The police didn’tgive sufficient notice of their presence andidentity. Unaware that the armed men break-ing down his door were law enforcement,Diotaiuto quickly retrieved his gun to defendhimself and his property from what he likelythought were criminal intruders.

Finally, even assuming everything Sunrisepolice say to be correct, the outcome in theDiotaiuto case is simply unacceptable. As isoften the case, the local police departmentassured the media soon after the shooting thatthe officers involved had stellar performancerecords. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel report-ed that both officers who shot Diotaiuto rou-tinely received “above-average” or “excellent”reviews, garnered dozens of recommenda-tions, and earned multiple “officer of themonth” distinctions.9 That may well be. Butthe problem with these types of drug raids israrely that the officers themselves were in errorin defending themselves in what was certainlya highly volatile situation. The problem is thatbad policies made the situation unnecessarilyvolatile. As Eleanor Shockett, a retired Miami-Dade circuit judge, put it to Fort LauderdaleSun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo withrespect to the Diotaiuto case, “What in the hellwere they doing with a SWAT team? To breakinto someone’s home at six in the morning,possibly awaken someone from a deep sleep,someone who has a concealed weapons per-mit? What did they expect to happen?”10

The Diotaiuto case is far from unusual. Justa few months before the raid in Sunrise, inMarch 2005, police on a drug raid in Omao,

Kauai, Hawaii, broke into the home of Sharonand William McCulley, at home at the timewith their grandchildren. Police were tracking abox that allegedly contained marijuana, andbelieved it to be in the McCulleys’ possession.After breaking down the elderly McCulleys’door, police threw the couple to the ground.They handcuffed Sharon McCulley and heldher to the floor with a gun to her head—hergrandchild lying next to her. William McCulley—who uses a walker and has an implanteddevice that delivers electrical shocks to his spineto relieve pain—began flopping around thefloor when the device malfunctioned from thetrauma of being violently thrown to theground.11

Police had the wrong address. In fact, theyconducted a second “wrong door” raid beforefinally tracking down the package.12

The use of hyper-militarized, heavily armedpolice units to carry out routine search war-rants has become increasingly common sincethe 1980s. These raids leave a very small mar-gin for error. A wrong address, bad timing, orbad information can—and frequently does—bring tragedy. The information giving rise tothese raids is typically collected from confiden-tial informants. These informants are some-times no more than well-meaning members ofthe community who want to tip police to illic-it activity. But more often they’re professional“snitches”—people who regularly seek out drugusers and dealers and tip off the police inexchange for cash rewards. A third, even morecommon class of informants is actual convict-ed or suspected drug dealers themselves, whoare then rewarded with leniency or cash inexchange for information leading to otherarrests. The folly of using informants of suchquestionable repute, who hold such obviousulterior motives to conduct raids with suchhigh stakes and such little room for error,would seem to be self-evident. Yet the practicegrows more and more common, and thejudges whom the criminal justice systementrusts to oversee the warrant process havegrown more and more complacent.

Policymakers seem to be oblivious to thisdisturbing trend in police work. Few are will-

3

The folly of using informantsof such question-able repute wouldseem to be self-evident. Yetthe practicegrows more andmore common.

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ing to question the policies that make theraids possible. Going to back to the Diotaiutocase, for example, one might ask why the townof Sunrise, Florida, a town with a populationof just 90,000 and which reported only a sin-gle murder for all of 2003, would need a SWATteam in the first place. And why would thetown use that SWAT team, first thing in themorning, to break into the home of a youngman with no history of violence?

The use of paramilitary police units beganin Los Angeles in the 1960s. Through the1970s, the idea slowly spilled out across thecountry. But at least until the 1980s, SWATteams and other paramilitary units were usedsparingly, only in volatile, high-risk situationssuch as bank robberies or hostage situations.Likewise, “no-knock” raids were generally usedonly in situations where innocent lives weredetermined to be at imminent risk. America’sWar on Drugs has spurred a significant rise inthe number of such raids, to the point where insome jurisdictions drug warrants are onlyserved by SWAT teams or similar paramilitaryunits, and the overwhelming number of SWATdeployments are to execute drug warrants.

The Diotaiuto case is a prime example of theinherent danger in “no-knock” and “quick-knock” raids because it exemplifies so many oftheir troubling characteristics, including thefollowing:

• The militarization of domestic policing,not just in big cities, but in small towns,suburbs, and exurbs like Sunrise.

• The increasingly frequent use of heavilyarmed SWAT teams for proactive polic-ing and the routine execution of drugwarrants, even for simple marijuana pos-session.

• The use of anonymous tips and relianceon dubious informants to obtain no-knock search warrants in the first place.

• Executing warrants with “dynamic entry,”diversionary grenades, and similarly mili-taristic tactics once reserved for urbanwarfare.

• A tragic outcome resulting from thesecircumstances.

In addition to nonviolent offenders likeAnthony Diotaiuto such tragic outcomesalso frequently involved people completelyinnocent of any crime. On September 4,1998, for example, police in Charlotte, NorthCarolina, deployed a flashbang grenade andcarried out a no-knock warrant based on atip that someone in the targeted home wasdistributing cocaine.13 When police gotinside, they found a group of men playingcards. One of them, 56-year-old Charles IrwinPotts, was carrying a handgun, which heowned and carried legally. Potts was not thetarget of the raid. He had visited the house toplay a game of cards. Police say Potts drew hisgun and pointed it at them as they entered, atwhich time they opened fire, killing Pottswith four shots to the chest. The three men inthe house who saw the raid say the gun neverleft Potts’s holster. Police found no cocaine inthe home, and made no arrests.

The men inside the house at the time ofthe raid thought criminals were invadingthem. “Only thing I heard was a big boom,”said Robert Junior Hardin, the original targetof the raid. “The lights went off and thenthey came back on . . . everybody reacted. Wethought the house was being robbed.”14

Despite Potts’s death, an internal investiga-tion found no wrongdoing on the part of theraiding officers.15

Of course, a paramilitary raid doesn’t haveto end in death to bring harm. Because ofshoddy police work, overreliance on infor-mants, and other problems, each year hun-dreds of raids are conducted on the wrongaddress, bringing unnecessary terror andfrightening confrontation to people neversuspected of a crime. On March 31, 2004, forexample, six officers toting riot shields andassault weapons rapped on the door to theBrooklyn apartment of 84-year-old MartinGoldberg and his wife Leona, 82. WhenGoldberg opened the door, police stormedthe apartment, pushing Mr. Goldberg asideand ordering him to the floor. “They chargedin like an army,” Goldberg, a decoratedWorld War II vet, told the New York Post.“They knocked pictures off the wall.”16

4

At least until the1980s, SWAT

teams and otherparamilitary

units were usedsparingly, only involatile, high-risksituations such as

bank robberies or hostage situations.

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The police had the wrong apartment. Theinvestigation apparently veered off course 10days earlier, when an informant pointed policeto one of two housing project buildings as thehome of a drug dealer. Police stormed thewrong building. Shortly after the raid, LeonaGoldberg was hospitalized with an irregularheartbeat.17 “It was terrible. . . . It was the mostfrightening experience of my life. . . . I thoughtit was a terrorist attack,” Mrs. Goldberg toldthe New York Post.18 One officer would later tellthe paper, “Obviously, there was a breakdownin communication. These were relatively inex-perienced officers, and they may have been lessthan vigilant.”

There are, of course, legitimate uses forboth SWAT teams and forced entry. But thoseuses—barricades, hostage situations, and ter-ror attacks, for example—are exceptionallyrare. This study will not recommend the aboli-tion of SWAT teams or unannounced policeraids. Rather, it will critique the increasinglypervasive use of both, particularly when itcomes to executing routine drug warrants, aswell as the effect of an increasing presence ofmilitary equipment, training, and tactics onAmerica’s police departments.

This study will begin with an overview ofhow no-knock and quick-knock raids cameinto common practice. It will then examinethe legal issues surrounding the use of suchtactics; examine the problem of using infor-mation from anonymous, sometimes paidinformants to obtain warrants; and prescribethe reforms needed to limit the use of para-military raids to the small set of emergencysituations that warrant their use. Finally, theAppendix will give details of scores of docu-mented examples in which these raids havegone awry, disproving the conventional beliefthat botched raids are infrequent “isolatedincidents.”

Overview

The typical SWAT team carries out its mis-sions in battle fatigues: Lace-up, combat-styleboots; black, camouflage, or olive-colored

pants and shirts, sometimes with “ninja-style”or balaclava hoods; Kevlar helmets and vests;gas masks, knee pads, gloves, communicationdevices, and boot knives; and military-gradeweapons, such as the Heckler and Koch MP5submachine gun, the preferred model of theU.S. Navy Seals. Other standard SWAT-teamweaponry includes battering rams, ballisticshields, “flashbang” grenades, smoke grenades,pepper spray, and tear gas. Many squads arenow ferried to raid sites by military-issuearmored personnel carriers. Some units havehelicopters. Others boast grenade launchers,tanks (with and without gun turrets), rap-pelling equipment, and bayonets.19

Paramilitary raids are generally carried outlate at night, or just before dawn. Police aretechnically bound by law to “knock andannounce” themselves, and give occupantstime to answer the door before forcing entry.But as will be discussed in this study, thatrequirement is today commonly either cir-cumvented through court-sanctioned loop-holes, ignored completely with little conse-quence, or only ceremoniously observed, witha knock and announcement unlikely to benoticed by anyone inside.

Police generally break open doors with abattering ram, or blow them off their hingeswith explosives. Absent either, police havepried doors open with sledgehammers orscrewdrivers, ripped them off by attachingthem to the back ends of trucks, or entered bycrashing through windows or balconies. Afteran entryway is cleared, police sometimes deto-nate a flashbang grenade or a similar devicedesigned to disorient the occupants in the tar-geted house. They then enter the home underits cover. SWAT teams have entered homesthrough fire escapes, by rappelling down frompolice helicopters, and by crashing throughsecond-story windows. Once police are inside,the occupants are quickly and forcefully inca-pacitated. They’re instructed to remain in theprone position, generally at gunpoint, whilepolice carry out the search warrant. Any per-ceived noncompliance is typically met withforce, which can potentially be lethal, depend-ing on the nature of the noncompliance.

5

“It was terrible. . . . It was the mostfrightening experience of mylife. . . . I thoughtit was a terroristattack.”

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Once rare, these procedures are now per-formed dozens of times per day in cities andtowns all across the country.

The Birth of SWATLongtime Los Angeles police chief Daryl

F. Gates is widely credited with inventing theSWAT team in early 1966, though there’ssome evidence that the idea was brought toGates a year earlier, when he was inspectorgeneral, by Los Angeles Police Departmentofficer John Nelson. The inspiration for themodern SWAT team was a specialized forcein Delano, California, made up of crowd con-trol officers, riot police, and snipers, assem-bled to counter the farm worker uprisings ledby Cesar Chavez.20

In search of new methods to counter thesnipers and guerrilla tactics used against L.A.police during the Watts riots, Gates and otherL.A. police officials quickly embraced the ideaof an elite, military-trained cadre of law enforce-ment officers who could react quickly, accu-rately, and with overwhelming force to particu-larly dangerous situations. Gates brought in ateam of ex-Marines to train a small group ofpolice officers Gates handpicked for the newendeavor. Gates called his unit the SpecialWeapons Attack Team, or SWAT. City officialsliked the idea, including the acronym, butbalked at the word “attack.” They persuadedGates to change the units name to SpecialWeapons and Tactics, though the new monikerwas purely cosmetic—no change in training ormission accompanied the name change.21

SWAT quickly gained favor with public offi-cials, politicians, and the public. In August1966, former Marine Charles Whitman barri-caded himself at the top of a clock tower at theUniversity of Texas and opened fire on the cam-pus below. Whitman shot 46 people and killed15. Police struggled for more than 90 minutesto remove Whitman from his tower perch.Public horror at Whitman’s slaughter quicklyturned into support for Gates’s idea of trainingelite teams to complement city policing in dan-gerous situations like the Whitman massacre.SWAT teams subsequently began to pop up inlarger urban areas across the country.22

Three years later, the L.A. SWAT teamengaged in a highly publicized shootout withthe city’s Black Panther militia. Publicity fromthe standoff won the L.A. SWAT team and theconcept of SWAT teams in general widespreadpublic acclaim. In a recent interview withNational Public Radio, Gates affirmed thatthe Black Panther shootout propelled theSWAT concept into the mainstream. “It wasthe first time we got to show off,” Gates said.23

The incident also earned the unit a measure ofglamour, and inspired yet more police depart-ments across the country to begin trainingtheir own SWAT-like units. Gates’s L.A. SWATteam would again be featured in a celebratedstandoff five years later, in May 1974, whenSWAT officers traded thousands of rounds ofgunfire with the Symbionese Liberation Armyon live national television.24

The SLA and Black Panther shootoutsbrought continued public fascination with theSWAT mystique. Gates’s experiment soonbecame a celebrated part of American pop cul-ture. A SWAT-themed television show debutedin 1975, and the show’s theme song hit theBillboard Top Forty. In 1995, Gates launched aSWAT video game franchise with SierraEntertainment. The SWAT series spawned sev-eral award winning “first-person” style shootergames, the most recent version of which wasreleased in early 2005. In January 2006, cabletelevision channel A&E debuted a new realitytelevision show called Dallas SWAT, which fol-lows the lives of the members of a Dallas,Texas, SWAT team. Court TV now carries theshow Texas SWAT, in which seasoned war jour-nalist Jeff Chagrin tags along with severalSWAT teams across the state.

But despite the American public’s fascina-tion with SWAT, until the 1980s, actualdeployments of the paramilitary units werestill largely confined to extraordinary, emer-gency situations such as hostage takings, bar-ricades, hijackings, or prison escapes. Thoughthe total number of SWAT teams graduallyincreased throughout the 1970s, they weremostly limited to larger, more urbanized areas,and the terms surrounding their deploymentwere still for the most part narrowly and

6

Public horror at Whitman’s

slaughter quicklyturned into support for

Gates’s idea oftraining elite

teams to complement city

policing in dangerous situa-

tions.

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appropriately defined. That changed in the1980s.

The Rise of Military Policing The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980

brought new funding, equipment, and a moreactive drug-policing role for paramilitarypolice units across the country. Reagan’s newoffensive in the War on Drugs involved amore confrontational, militaristic approachto combating the drug supply, a policy enthu-siastically embraced by Congress.25 Duringthe next 10 years, with prodding from theWhite House, Congress paved the way towidespread military-style policing by carvingyawning drug war exceptions to the PosseComitatus Act, the Civil War–era law pro-hibiting the use of the military for civilianpolicing. These new exceptions allowed nearlyunlimited sharing of drug interdiction intelli-gence, training, tactics, technology, andweaponry between the Pentagon and federal,state, and local police departments.

The first of these exemptions was theMilitary Cooperation with Law EnforcementAct, passed in 1981.26 This wide-reaching leg-islation encouraged the military to give local,state, and federal police access to militarybases, research, and equipment for drug inter-diction. It also authorized the military to traincivilian police officers to use the newly avail-able equipment, and not only encouraged themilitary to share drug-war–related informa-tion with civilian police but authorized themilitary to take an active role in preventingdrugs from entering the country.

In a 1999 paper for the Cato Institute onthe militarization of American policing,Diane Cecilia Weber outlined ensuing lawspassed in the 1980s and 1990s that furthereroded the clear demarcation between mili-tary and civilian drug enforcement set forthby Posse Comitatus. Among the laws cited byWeber are the following:

• In 1986, President Reagan issued aNational Security Decision Directive,which declared drugs a threat to U.S.“national security.” The directive allowed

for yet more cooperation between local,state, and federal law enforcement andthe military.

• In 1988, Congress ordered the NationalGuard to assist state drug enforcementefforts. Because of this order, NationalGuard troops today patrol for marijuanaplants and assist in large-scale anti-drugoperations in every state in the country.

• In 1989, President Bush created a series ofregional task forces within the Depart-ment of Defense, charged with facilitatingcooperation between the military anddomestic police forces.

• In 1994, the Department of Defenseissued a memorandum authorizing thetransfer of equipment and technology tostate and local police. The same year,Congress created a “reutilization pro-gram” to facilitate handing military gearover to civilian police agencies.27

Despite the fact that these laws were a sig-nificant departure from longstanding domesticpolicy, most were passed without much mediaattention or public debate. What debate therewas was muted by assurances from politiciansand drug war supporters that (a) the scourge ofdrugs was too threatening and too pervasive tobe fought with traditional policing and (b) crit-ics who feared for the civil liberties of Americancivilians under a more militarized system werealarmist and overstating their case. Rep. CharlesBennett (D-FL), for example, called the century-old Posse Comitatus Act—a law whose princi-ples can be traced directly to concerns expressedby the Founding Fathers—a “sinful, evil law.”28

In 1989, Drug Enforcement Agency adminis-trator Francis Mullen forthrightly asserted thatCongress should green-light the use of the U.S.military in law enforcement because “there issufficient oversight on the part of Congress andothers to deter infringement on individual lib-erties.”29 Also in 1989, then–secretary of defenseDick Cheney declared, “The detection andcountering of the production, trafficking anduse of illegal drugs is a high priority nationalsecurity mission of the Department of De-fense.”30

7

Reagan’s newoffensive in theWar on Drugsinvolved a moreconfrontational,militaristicapproach to combating thedrug supply.

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After each of these policies was enacted,police departments across the countryhelped themselves to the newly availableequipment, training, and funding. By the late1990s, the various laws, orders, and directivessoftening Posse Comitatus had added a sig-nificant military component to state andlocal police forces. Between just 1995 and1997, the Pentagon distributed 3,800 M-16s,2,185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers, and 112armored personnel carriers to civilian policeagencies across the country.31

In 1997 alone, the Pentagon handed overmore than 1.2 million pieces of military equip-ment to local police departments.32 The sameyear, even as critics were beginning to questionthe growing militarism of civilian policing,Congress made it even easier for Main Streetpolice departments to acquire military hard-ware from the Pentagon. The NationalDefense Authorization Security Act of 1997,commonly called “1033” for the section of theU.S. Code assigned to it, created the LawEnforcement Support Program, an agencyheadquartered in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. The newagency was charged with streamlining thetransfer of military equipment to civilianpolice departments. It worked. Transfers ofequipment took off at an even greater clip thanbefore. The National Journal reports thatbetween January 1997 and October 1999, theagency handled 3.4 million orders of Pentagonequipment from over 11,000 domestic policeagencies in all 50 states.33 By December 2005,the number was up to 17,000.34 The purchasevalue of the equipment comes to more than$727 million.35 The National Journal reportedthat included in the bounty were

253 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes, and UH-60 Black-hawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters), 7,856M-16 rifles, 181 grenade launchers,8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161pairs of night-vision goggles.36

Civilian police departments suddenlyfound themselves flush with military arms.The Los Angeles Police Department was

offered bayonets.37 The city of St. Petersburg,Florida, bought an armored personnel carrierfrom the Pentagon for just $1,000.38 The sevenpolice officers of Jasper, Florida—which has allof 2,000 people and hasn’t had a murder in 14years—were each given a military-grade M-16machine gun, leading one Florida paper to runthe headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.”39 The sheriff’s office in landlocked BooneCounty, Indiana, was given an amphibiousarmored personnel carrier.40

The New York Times reported in 1999 thatthe Fresno, California, SWAT team had twohelicopters with night-vision goggles and heatsensors, a turret-armed armored personnelcarrier, and an armored van.41 In a similar arti-cle on the Fresno police department, theWashington Post reported that members haveaccess to “battering rams, diversionary devicesknown as ‘flashbangs,’ chemical agents, suchas pepper spray and tear gas, and . . . assaultrifles.” They wear “subdued gray-and-blackurban camouflage and body armor,” the Postreported, “and have at the ready, ballisticshields and helmets, M17 gas masks and rap-pelling gear.”42 A retired police chief in NewHaven, Connecticut, told the Times in the 1999article, “I was offered tanks, bazookas, any-thing I wanted.”43

In a 1997 60 Minutes segment on the trendtoward militarization, the CBS news magazineprofiled the Sheriff’s Department of MarionCounty, Florida, a rural, agricultural areaknown for its horse farms. Courtesy of the var-ious Pentagon giveaway programs, the countysheriff proudly showed reporter Lesley Stahlthe department’s 23 military helicopters, twoC-12 luxury executive aircraft (often called the“Rolls Royce with wings”), a motor home, sev-eral trucks and trailers, a tank, and a “bombrobot.” This, in addition to an arsenal of mili-tary-grade assault weapons.44

With all of this funding and free or dis-counted equipment and training from the fed-eral government, police departments acrossthe country needed something to do with it.So they formed SWAT teams—thousands ofthem. SWAT teams have since multiplied andspread across the country at a furious clip.

8

In 1997 alone, the Pentagon

handed over morethan 1.2 million

pieces of militaryequipment to

local policedepartments.

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In a widely cited survey, criminologist PeterKraska found that as of 1997, 90 percent ofcities with populations of 50,000 or more hadat least one paramilitary police unit, twice asmany as in the mid-1980s.45 The increase hasbeen even more pronounced in smaller towns:In a separate study, Kraska found that thenumber of SWAT teams serving towns withpopulations between 25,000 and 50,000increased 157 percent between 1985 and1996.46 They’ve popped up in college townslike South Bend, Indiana, and Champaign,Illinois, where they’re increasingly used for rou-tine marijuana policing.47 The University ofCentral Florida’s campus police departmentactually has its own, separate SWAT team,independent of the city and county.48 As of1996, 65 percent of towns within the 25,000-50,000-population range had a SWAT team,with another 8 percent planning to form one.49

Given that the trends giving rise to SWAT pro-liferation in the 1990s haven’t gone away, it’ssafe to assume that all of these numbers havecontinued to rise and are significantly highertoday. In fact, SWAT teams are increasinglypopping up in even smaller towns. Harwich,Massachusetts (population: 11,000), has a 10-member SWAT team, as do Middleburg,Pennsylvania (population 1,363), Leesburg,Florida (population: 17,000), Mt. Orab, Ohio(2,701), Neenah, Wisconsin (24,507), andButler, Missouri (4,201), to name just a few.50

In 2002, more than three years before theDiotaiuto shooting, the Miami Herald ran aprophetic report about the SWAT teams prolif-erating across small-town Florida, including inBroward County suburbs like Miramar (popu-lation 101,000), Pembroke Pines (150,000), andDavie (82,579). “Police say they want [SWATteams] in case of a hostage situation or aColumbine-type incident,” the paper reported,“But in practice, the teams are used mainly toserve search warrants on suspected drug deal-ers. Some of these searches yield as little as fewgrams of cocaine or marijuana.”51 The papereven cited experts who warned that the copioususe of SWAT teams could eventually bring trag-ic consequences, foretelling the Diotaiutoshooting (though there had already been a

number of botched paramilitary drug raids inFlorida by that time).52

A subsequent investigation by the St.Petersburg Times found that many Floridapolice departments even fudged crime statis-tics and exaggerated local drug crimes in aneffort to get more military weaponry. The“panhandle town of Lynn Haven (pop. 12,451)reported a 900 percent rise in armed rob-beries,” the paper wrote, “without telling regu-lators that the raw number of robberies rosefrom one to 10, then fell to one again just asquickly.”53 The investigation also found thatwithout the military’s sophisticated anti-theftsystem tracking the weapons once theyreached the police departments, many wentmissing or were stolen, meaning many officerscould potentially later encounter the sameweapons in the hands of criminals.54

As the Miami Herald reported was happen-ing in Florida, it’s commonplace for policeofficials who want a SWAT team to attemptto assuage community concerns by arguingthe units are necessary to thwart the possibil-ity of terrorism, school shootings, or violentcrime. Once in place, however, SWAT teamsare inevitably used far more frequently, most-ly in the service of drug warrants. When thetown of Ithaca, New York, reformulated itsSWAT team in 2000, Assistant CommanderPeter Tyler answered questions as to why thesmall town, which has virtually no violentcrime, would need a paramilitary force byinstructing critics to consider news reports ofmass shootings and other violence all overthe country. “I think it’s naïve for anyone tothink it couldn’t happen here in Ithaca,”Tyler added. Later, in the same article, PoliceChief Richard Basile noted that Ithaca’snewer, smaller team would be more efficient,because it would save the town money whenserving drug warrants, the unit’s primaryfunction.55

In 2004, officials in the New York countiesof Oswego and Cayuga defended their newSWAT teams (referred to by public officials bythe less menacing moniker “Special Opera-tions Units”) as necessary in a post–Septem-ber 11 world. “We’re in a new era, a new time,

9

It’s commonplacefor police officials whowant a SWATteam to attemptto assuage community concerns by arguing the unitsare necessary tothwart the possibility of terrorism, schoolshootings, or violent crime.Once in place,however, SWATteams areinevitably used inthe service ofdrug warrants.

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here,” said one sheriff. “The bad guys are a lit-tle different than they used to be, so we’re justtrying to keep up with the needs for today andhope we never have to use it.” The same offi-cial later said in the same article that the unitwould be used “for a lot of other purposes,too. High-profile arraignments. Just a multi-tude of other things, too.”56

In 2001, Madison, Wisconsin’s CapitalTimes reported that as of 2001, 65 of the state’s83 local SWAT teams had come into beingsince 1980, 28 since 1996, and 16 since 2000.Many of those newly established teams hadpopped up in absurdly small towns like ForestCounty (population 9,950), Mukwonago(7,519), and Rice Lake (8,320).57

Given that small towns generally don’thave the money for high-tech military gear,this explosion of SWAT teams is almost cer-tainly the result of the Pentagon’s giveawayprogram, as well as federal programs thatprovide money to local police departmentsfor drug control. In Wisconsin alone duringthe 1990s, local police departments weregiven nearly 100,000 pieces of military equip-ment valued at more than $18 million.Columbia County, Wisconsin (population:52,468), was given more than 5,000 militaryitems valued at $1.75 million, including,according to the Capital Times, “11 M-16s, 21bayonets, four boats, a periscope, and 41vehicles, one of which was converted into amobile command center for the SWATteam.” The county also received “surveillanceequipment, cold weather gear, tools, battledress uniforms, flak jackets, chemical suits,computers, and office equipment.”58

Like the Miami Herald and upstate NewYork examples, the Capital Times investiga-tion found that though paramilitary unitsare often justified to town councils and skep-tical citizens as essential to fight terrorism,deal with hostage situations, and diffuse sim-ilarly rare but volatile situations; once estab-lished, they’re rarely deployed for those rea-sons. Instead, they’re almost always sent toserve routine search warrants, make drugarrests, and conduct similar drug-relatedproactive policing.59

One sheriff, for example, convinced hiscounty to give him a SWAT team after one ofhis deputies was killed in a shootout. Now, hetold the Capital Times, he uses the unit primar-ily for “drug searches and stuff.” A police cap-tain in Green Bay noted that armed barricadesare happening “less and less,” and so theSWAT team instead “assists the drug taskforce on a regular basis.” The Jackson County,Wisconsin, SWAT captain likewise told thepaper that the most common use of the teamsis for “drug search warrants.” ColumbiaCounty, Wisconsin, put its $1.75 millionPentagon bounty to use at “Weedstock” innearby Saulk County, where cops in fullSWAT attire stood guard to intimidate while,as the Times reports, “hundreds of young peo-ple gather[ed] peacefully to smoke marijuanaand listen to music.”60

The Capital Times also found that in addi-tion to free equipment, the federal governmentgave money to the states for drug control, pri-marily through the Byrne Justice AssistanceGrant program, as well as various federal lawenforcement block grants. The states then dis-bursed the money to local police departmentson the basis of each department’s number ofdrug arrests. The extra funding was only tied toanti-drug policing. In some cases, the fundingcould offset the entire cost of establishing andmaintaining a SWAT team, with funds leftover. The paper found that the size of the dis-bursements was directly tied to the number ofcity or county drug arrests, noting that eacharrest in theory would net a given city or coun-ty about $153 in state and federal funding.Jackson County, Wisconsin, for example,quadrupled its drug arrests between 1999 and2000. Correspondingly, the county’s federalsubsidy quadrupled, too.61

Drug arrests, then, made cities and coun-ties eligible for federal money. And federalmoney and equipment allowed for the cre-ation of SWAT teams. Non-drug-related polic-ing brought no federal dollars, even for violentcrime. The result: Federal policies allowedsmall police departments to claim surplusmilitary equipment, which many then decidedto put to use by forming a SWAT team.

10

ColumbiaCounty,

Wisconsin, wasgiven more than

5,000 militaryitems valued at

$1.75 million.

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Federal funding for drug arrests then createdan incentive for officials to then increasinglydeploy those units for drug crimes, the onlykind of crime for which arrests brought inmoney.62

Perhaps most perversely, the Times foundthat in several cases new SWAT officers werehired under President Clinton’s “communitypolicing” program.63 Community policingwas originally billed as a less authoritarian,more civil-minded form of law enforcementdesigned, in Clinton’s words, “to build bondsof understanding and trust between policeand citizens.”64 Part of that program wasClinton’s resurrection of the Vietnam era“Troops to Cops” programs, which promisedfederal funding for local police departmentswho hire and train war veterans as civilianpolice officers, a program embraced by bothDemocrats and Republicans.65 It’s not impos-sible, of course, for a former solider to betrained as an effective civilian police officer.But that the federal government would beencouraging an en masse transition from thebattlefield to Main Street displays a lack ofunderstanding of the differences between theideal military mindset and the ideal mindsetof a civilian police officer.

Clinton’s “community policing” programwas distorted in other areas of the country,too. In Portland, for example, from 1989 to1994, the ratio of common patrol officers tocitizens in Portland actually fell. But thenumber of police in the paramilitary TacticalOperations Branch of the Portland PoliceBureau increased from 2 to 56.66

In one survey of law enforcement officerswho worked in departments with paramilitaryunits, nearly two-thirds responded that thoseunits “play an important role in communitypolicing strategies.”67 Most criminal justiceexperts reject that possibility. “Communitypolicing initiatives and stockpiling weapons andgrenade launchers are totally incompatible,” onecriminal justice professor at the University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee told the Capital Times.68

Thanks to the federal subsidies for drugarrests, then, not only did the number ofSWAT teams soar through the 1980s and

1990s, so too did the frequency with whichthey were deployed. In 1972, there were just afew hundred paramilitary drug raids per yearin the United States.69 According to Kraska, bythe early 1980s there were 3,000 annual SWATdeployments, by 1996 there were 30,000, andby 2001 there were 40,000.70 The average citypolice department deployed its paramilitarypolice unit about once a month in the early1980s. By 1995, that number had risen toseven.71 To give one example, the city ofMinneapolis, Minnesota, deployed its SWATteam on no-knock warrants 35 times in 1987.By 1996, the same unit had been deployed fordrug raids more than 700 times that yearalone.72

In small- to medium-sized cities, Kraskaestimates that 80 percent of SWAT calloutsare now for warrant service. In large cities, it’sabout 75 percent. These numbers, too, havebeen on the rise since the early 1980s.73

Orange County, Florida, deployed its SWATteam 619 times during one five-year period inthe 1990s. Ninety-four percent of those call-outs were to serve search warrants, not forhostage situations or police standoffs.74

Many SWAT teams are now deployed forroutine police duties beyond even the drugwar. For several years, the heavily armedFresno SWAT team mentioned earlier wasused for routine, full-time patrolling in high-crime areas. The Violent Crime SuppressionUnit, as it was called, was given carte blancheto enter residences and apprehend andsearch occupants in high-crime, mostlyminority neighborhoods. The unit routinelystopped pedestrians without probable cause,searched them, interrogated them, andentered their personal information into acomputer. “It’s a war,” one SWAT officer tolda reporter from the Nation. Said another, “Ifyou’re 21, male, living in one of these neigh-borhoods, and you’re not in our computer,then there’s something definitely wrong.”75

The VCSU was disbanded in 2001 after aseries of lawsuits alleging police brutality andwrongful shootings, though officials claimthe unit was dissolved because it had “ful-filled its goals.”76

11

By the early 1980sthere were 3,000annual SWATdeployments, by1996 there were30,000, and by2001 there were40,000.

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But this incorporation of paramilitary tac-tics into routine, even non-drug-related polic-ing goes well beyond Fresno. Paramilitaryunits now also conduct routine patrols incities such as Indianapolis and San Francisco,a development one Boston Globe reporterremarked gives these communities “all theambience of the West Bank.”77 The Bay Area inCalifornia has a separate SWAT team just toguard its subway system.78 About 18 percentof paramilitary units across the country nowat least periodically conduct roving patrols inhigh-crime areas.79 Explains one official inwhat Peter Kraska describes as a “highlyacclaimed community policing department”:

We’re into saturation patrols in hotspots [high-crime areas]. We do a lot ofour work with the SWAT unit becausewe have bigger guns. We send out two,two-to four man cars, we look forminor violations and do jump-outs,either on people on the street or auto-mobiles. After we jump-out the secondcar provides periphery cover with anostentatious display of weaponry.80

Another SWAT commander in a medium-sized Midwestern town sends paramilitaryunits out on routine patrols in an armored per-sonnel carrier. “We stop anything that moves,”the commander said. “We’ll sometimes evensurround suspicious homes and bring out theMP5s.”81 Another official, a police chief, ex-plained his department’s “community polic-ing” efforts in particularly militaristic jargon:

It’s going to come to the point that theonly people that are going to be able todeal with these problems [in high-crimeareas] are highly trained tactical teamswith proper equipment to go into aneighborhood and clear the neighbor-hood and hold it; allowing communitypolicing and problem oriented policingofficers to come in and start turning theneighborhood around.82

The deployment of SWAT teams for rou-

tine police work, even independent of thedrug war, has reaped unfortunate—thoughpredictable—results, from general policeoverreaction to mass raids on entire neigh-borhoods, to the deaths of innocent people.In January 1999, for example, a SWAT teamin Chester, Pennsylvania, outraged the localcommunity when it raided Chester HighSchool in full tactical gear to break up a halfdozen students who had been loitering out-side the school in the early afternoon.83

An incident like that is troubling enough.But the use of heavily armed police tactics inresponse to nonviolent offenses can have farmore tragic consequences. In 1998, theVirginia Beach SWAT team shot and killedsecurity guard Edward C. Reed in a 3 a.m.gambling raid on a private club. Police saythey approached the tinted car where Reedwas working security, knocked, and identi-fied themselves, at which point Reed refusedto drop his handgun. Reed’s family insiststhat the police version of events is unlikely,given that Reed was a security guard and hadno criminal record. More likely, they say,Reed mistakenly believed the raiding officerswere there to do harm, particularly given thatthe club had been robbed not long before.According to police, Reed’s last words were,“Why did you shoot me? I was reading abook.”84 Club owner Darrin Hyman actuallyshot back at the SWAT team. Prosecutorswould later decline to press felony chargesagainst Hyman, concluding he had good rea-son to believe he was under attack.85 Hymanwas convicted of a misdemeanor gamblingoffense (playing a game of dice with friends)and of discharging a firearm.86

A similar scene unfolded in Virginia inJanuary 2006, when police in Fairfax used aSWAT team to serve a search warrant onSalvatore Culosi Jr., whom they suspected ofgambling on sporting events. When the SWATteam confronted Culosi as he came out of hishome, one officer’s gun discharged, strikingCulosi in the chest and killing him. Police con-cede that Culosi had no weapon and made nomenacing gestures as police prepared to arresthim. The Washington Post reported that Fairfax

12

“We stop anything that

moves,” the commander said.“We’ll sometimes

even surroundsuspicious homesand bring out the

MP5s.”

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County, Virginia, conducts nearly all of itssearch warrants with a SWAT team, includingthose involving white-collar and nonviolentcrime.87 Fairfax County prosecutor RobertHoran declined to press charges against theofficer despite the fact that tests found nodefect in the officer’s weapon.88

SWAT teams are also increasingly—andoddly—being called in to negotiate with sui-cide cases, again sometimes yielding tragicresults.89 In one case that made national head-lines in 1995, the family of a depressed 33-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, mannamed Larry Harper called police out of fearthat Harper was about to commit suicide.Police responded with a nine-member SWATteam, dressed in full military gear and armedwith automatic rifles and flashbang grenades.Harper’s family overheard one member say,“Let’s go get the bad guy,” before the SWATteam chased Harper through the woods of alocal park. According to the New York Times,Harper died when the SWAT team “foundhim cowering behind a juniper tree and shothim to death from 43 feet away.”90

Even Larry Glick, former executive directorof the National Tactical Officers Association,an organization that represents the interestsof SWAT teams and paramilitary police units,told the National Journal in 2000: “The originalmission of SWAT teams has changed. If theSWAT team is not busy responding to initialbarricades, people say they’re lazy. Depart-ments want to give them something to do.Some agencies have given them too much todo. Some are overused.”91 The article went onto report that SWAT teams are now beingused to respond even to calls about angry dogsand domestic disputes.

The proliferation of SWAT teams hasextended to the federal government, too. Inaddition to the much-criticized, high-profileuse of federal paramilitary troops in the 1993siege at Waco and the use of more than 150SWAT officers to seize six-year-old Cubanrefugee Elian Gonzalez in 1999, federal SWATteams are proliferating in other odd depart-ments. As of 2000, at least 10 federal agencieshad SWAT teams, including such unlikely

agencies as the Department of Energy, theNational Park Service, and the State Depart-ment. Former FBI director William Webstertold NBC News in 2000 that the federal gov-ernment is becoming “too enamored withSWAT teams, draining money away from con-ventional law enforcement.”92

SWAT proliferation is also having anothereffect: it’s introducing the military culture, mil-itary equipment, and the military mindset evento parts of the civilian police force not involvedin SWAT teams or like paramilitary units. In2004, the Washington, D.C., police departmentswitched to military-style uniforms. The uni-forms are dark blue, similar to those worn bythe city’s SWAT team, and feature a cap pat-terned after that worn by the U.S. Marines.93

Patrol officers in Indianapolis are now armedwith M-16 rifles supplied by the military. Theofficers are trained at the Camp Atterbury mili-tary base in Edinburgh, Indiana.94 SeveralChicago-area police departments now use theM-16 as well, including police in Waukegan,Zion, Mundelein, and Lake Zurich, Illinois. Aspokesman for the Illinois Association of Chiefsof Police cited the 1999 Columbine HighSchool massacre as justification for the high-powered weaponry.95 Patrol officers in Or-lando, Portland, and even tiny Pinole, Califor-nia, now carry military-grade weapons.96

Private suppliers of military equipment havebeen eager to tap their new clients. Covert ActionQuarterly reported in 1997 that “gun compa-nies, perceiving a profitable trend, beganaggressively marketing automatic weapons tolocal police departments, holding seminars andsending out color brochures redolent withninja-style imagery.”97 Suppliers of paramilitarygear frequently sponsor “SWAT games” aroundthe country, in which members of paramilitaryteams compete in shooting, strength, endur-ance, and rescue competitions.98 Websites andbrochures from sponsor-suppliers at thesecompetitions make little distinction betweencop and soldier, blending battle images withphotos and depictions of SWAT raids and civil-ian policing. NTOA actually publishes its ownmagazine, Tactical Edge, though civilians are pro-hibited from subscribing to it.99 Another, SWAT

13

SWAT teams arenow being used torespond even to calls aboutangry dogs anddomestic disputes.

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magazine, abounds in ads featuring soldiers infull military garb and features articles such as“Polite, Professional, and Prepared to Kill” (toits credit, SWAT magazine at least does invitewriters with contrarian points of view to submitcritiques of police militarization).100

NTOA spokesman Glick told the WashingtonPost in 1997 that Heckler and Koch, makers ofthe popular MP5 used by Navy SEALs andSWAT teams across the country, puts on someof the most popular tactical seminars in thebusiness. Most seminars feature “retired mili-tary personnel who don’t know what they’redoing,” Glick said, while Heckler and Koch’s is“very successful and credible, among the best.Their ultimate goal is to sell guns.”101

Heckler and Koch’s slogan for the MP5 is,“From the Gulf War to the Drug War—BattleProven.”102 As the Independence Institute’sDavid Kopel points out, such baldly militaris-tic marketing has real-world consequences:

When a weapon’s advertising andstyling deliberately blur the line be-tween warfare and law enforcement, itis not unreasonable to expect thatsome officers—especially when understress—will start behaving as if theywere in the military. That is preciselywhat happened at Waco when BATFagents began firing indiscriminatelyinto the building, rather than firing atparticular targets. . . . It is ironic thatmany city governments, at the behestof the gun prohibition lobbies, aresuing gun manufacturers for truthfuladvertising stating that firearms in theresponsible hands of law-abiding citi-zens can provide important protection.At the same time, many Americancities are equipping their police depart-ments with machine pistols and otherautomatic weaponry whose advertis-ing (like Heckler & Koch’s) encouragesirresponsible, military-style use ofweapons in a civilian environment.103

As if outfitting soldiers in war gear weren’tenough, many SWAT teams and paramilitary

units now train with elite military units. In1989, then–defense secretary Dick Cheneycreated Joint Task Force Six, a unit based inFort Bliss, Texas, that conducts highly spe-cialized military-style training for domesticlaw enforcement in such areas as helicopterattacks, sniping, and urban combat tech-niques. The unit was established to providemilitary assistance in drug interdiction andborder control. In addition to Joint TaskForce Six, the U.S. Army Military Police, theMarine Corps, the Navy SEALs, and theArmy Rangers also each provide training fordomestic police departments, respectively.104

Two years after Joint Task Force Six’s cre-ation, one assistant secretary of defense saidat an army conference, “We can look forwardto the day when our Congress . . . allows theArmy to lend its full strength toward makingAmerica drug free.”105

Forty-six percent of the paramilitary unitssurveyed by Kraska in the 1990s reported thattheir SWAT teams or paramilitary units hadbeen trained by current or former members ofa military special forces unit—generally eitherthe Navy SEALs or the Army Rangers. Accord-ing to one commander: “We’ve had teams ofNavy SEALs come here and teach us every-thing. We just have to use our own judgmentand exclude the information like: ‘at this pointwe bring in the mortars and blow the placeup.’”106

Before 1993, the U.S. Army held a prohi-bition against teaching close-quarters, urbancombat techniques to civilian police forces.107

In part because of political pressure tomount a more aggressive approach to thedrug war, that prohibition was lifted. TheU.S. military now routinely conducts jointparamilitary training operations with civilianpolice departments.108

The National Guard, an organization thatin some ways brides the gap between the fed-eral military and state and local police forces,has also become more involved in drug inter-diction efforts. In 1992, the chief of the DrugDemand Reduction Section of the NationalGuard asserted that “the rapid growth of thisdrug scourge has shown that military force

14

Heckler andKoch’s slogan for

the MP5 is,“From the Gulf

War to the DrugWar—Battle

Proven.”

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must be used to change the attitudes andactivities of Americans who are dealing andusing drugs.”109 At about that time, theNational Guard was making 20,000 drugarrests, searching more than 100,000 automo-biles, entering more than 1,000 privatelyowned buildings, and encroaching on privateproperty in drug search operations more than6,500 times per year.110 In 1998, the IndianaNational Guard helped raze more than 40 sus-pected crack houses in Gary, Indiana.111 Andby 2000, the National Guard was routinelymaking sweeps of open fields in California,Kentucky, and several other states looking formarijuana.112 The Coast Guard is also nowroutinely used in drug intervention efforts onwaterways.113 And in some instances, the NavySEALS and Army Rangers themselves havebeen called in to provide assistance on drugefforts.

Problems with ParamilitaryDrug Raids

The next two sections will scrutinize boththe increasing militarization of civilian polic-ing and the practice of using paramilitarypolice units to conduct the routine executionof drug warrants.

Criticism of Military Policing in GeneralThe most obvious problem with the mili-

tarization of civilian policing is that the mili-tary and the police have two distinctly differ-ent tasks. The military’s job is to seek out,overpower, and destroy an enemy. Thoughsoldiers attempt to avoid them, collateralcasualties are accepted as inevitable. Police,on the other hand, are charged with “keepingthe peace,” or “to protect and serve.” Theirjob is to protect the rights of the individualswho live in the communities they serve, notto annihilate an enemy. Former Reaganadministration official Lawrence Korb put itmore succinctly: soldiers are “trained tovaporize, not Mirandize.”114

Given that civilian police now tote mili-tary equipment, get military training, and

embrace military culture and values, itshouldn’t be surprising when officers beginto act like soldiers, treat civilians like com-batants, and tread on private property as if itwere part of a battlefield. Of course, it’s hardto overlook the fact that the soldiering-up ofcivilian police forces is taking place as part ofthe larger War on Drugs, which grows moresaturated with war imagery, tactics, andphraseology every day.

Many longtime police officials are con-cerned. The new organization Law Enforce-ment Against Prohibition, for example, hasgrown to more than 3,500 members since itsinception in 2003.115 LEAP represents currentand former police officers and prosecutorswho support drastic reforms in the nation’sdrug laws. The organization’s president, retirednarcotics officer Jack Cole, cites the pervasive-ness of mistaken SWAT raids as one regrettableconsequence of the War on Drugs. “There aretoo many WRONG houses,” Cole writes. “Itdoes not need to happen.”116 In 1997, oneretired sergeant wrote a letter to the editor ofthe Washington Post in protest of the movetoward a more militarized police force. “Onetends to throw caution to the wind when wear-ing ‘commando-chic’ regalia, a bulletproof vestwith the word ‘POLICE’ emblazoned on bothsides, and when one is armed with high techweaponry,” he warned. “We have not yet seen asituation like [the British police occupation of]Belfast. But some police chiefs are determinedto move in that direction.”117

Though most military officials tend tosupport the idea of separate policing andfighting forces, the sentiment isn’t universal.One prominent military scholar, in fact, con-firmed the worst fears of the retired sergeantin Washington, D.C., by recommending aNorthern Ireland approach to high-crimeareas in the United States. Thomas A. Marks, awidely published expert and consultant andadjunct professor at the U.S. Joint SpecialOperations University in Florida, wrote thatcrime in certain areas of the United States isworse than it was in Northern Ireland at theheight of the province’s struggles with theBritish. “What we have, then, are human

15

It’s hard to overlook the fact that the soldiering-up ofcivilian policeforces is takingplace as part ofthe larger War onDrugs, whichgrows more saturated withwar imagery, tactics, andphraseologyevery day.

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cesspools—in every sense already centers ofcriminal activity, as well as economic and spir-itual poverty, well beyond anything NorthernIreland can throw up in terms of misery anddeath—waiting for some jolt to create wavesthat leap out of the pool.” That jolt, Marksbelieves, is a permanent military policing pres-ence. He recommends domestic police forcesadopt an approach similar to what the Britishutilized in Northern Ireland, a military polic-ing force to “seize and clear” areas, and adopta warlike counterinsurgency strategy in high-crime areas.118

But most military officials understandthe threat such a presence would pose to civilsociety. In the 1980s, as Congress was prepar-ing to gut the Posse Comitatus Act, severalU.S. military officials protested. Marinemajor general Stephen G. Olmstead, forexample, the deputy assistant secretary ofdefense for drug policy, told a U.S. Senatesubcommittee in 1987 that it was about tomake a grave mistake:

One of [America’s] greatest strengths isthat the military is responsive to civilianauthority and that we do not allow theArmy, Navy, and the Marines and theAir Force to be a police force. History isreplete with countries that allowed thatto happen. Disaster is the result.119

Col. Charles J. Dunlap, a distinguishedgraduate of the National War College, has writ-ten prolifically on the dangers of the creepingmilitarization of civilian life. “[U]sing militaryforces for tasks that are essentially law enforce-ment requires a fundamental change in orien-tation,” he writes. “To put it bluntly, in its mostbasic iteration, military training is aimed atkilling people and breaking things. . . . Policeforces, on the other hand, take an entirely dif-ferent approach. They have to exercise thestudied restraint that a judicial processrequires; they gather evidence and arrest ‘sus-pects.’ . . . These are two different views of theworld.”120

There are also at least a few police officialsthat understand the threat of overly milita-

rized policing. Nick Pastore, a New Havenpolice chief, now retired, was one of fewpolice chiefs to turn down the Pentagon’smilitary bounty. Pastore told the New YorkTimes that outfitting cops in soldier gear“feeds a mind-set that you’re not a police offi-cer serving a community, you’re a soldier atwar. I had some tough-guy cops in mydepartment pushing for bigger and morehardware. They used to say, ‘It’s a war outthere.’ They like SWAT because it’s an adven-ture.”121 Pastore warned that the militaryapproach paints civilians as the enemy in theeyes of police officers. “If you think everyonewho uses drugs is the enemy, they you’remore likely to declare war on the people.”122

In an interview with the Nation, Pastorerecalled that before he took over, NewHaven’s SWAT team was being called out sev-eral times per week. “The whole city was suf-fering trauma,” he said. “We had politicianssaying ‘the streets are a war zone, the policehave taken over,’ and the police were drivenby fear and adventure. SWAT was a big partof that.”123 After Pastore’s reforms, NewHaven’s SWAT team was called out just fourtimes in all of 1998. Defying SWAT support-ers who say “get tough” policing is responsi-ble for the recent drop in crime rates, NewHaven’s crime rate dropped at rates greaterthan the rest of Connecticut, from 13,950incidents in 1997 to 9,455 in 2000.124

Another chief who bucked the tide wasMarquette County, Wisconsin’s, sheriff, RickFullmer. He disbanded his county’s SWATteam in 1996. “Quite frankly, they get excitedabout dressing up in black and doing thatkind of thing,” Fullmer told a local media out-let. “I said, ‘this is ridiculous.’ All we’re going toend up doing is getting people hurt.”125

More evidence for the effect militarizationis having on the mindset of civilian police offi-cers can be found in the words and actions ofcivilian officers and police officials themselves.Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates, for exam-ple, once suggested that casual drug useamounts to “treason,” and that offendersshould be “be taken out and shot.”126 MarionCounty, Florida’s, Ken Ergle, the sheriff 60

16

“Quite frankly,they get excited

about dressing upin black and

doing that kind ofthing. I said, ‘thisis ridiculous.’ All

we’re going to endup doing is get-

ting people hurt.”

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Minutes profiled for having accumulated ahangar full of free helicopters and luxuryplanes, explained to Lesley Stahl, “Well, withany county, with any state, with any nation,you always have to prepare for the threat ofwar. . . . My war is on the streets, fighting thecriminals.”127

Of course, police officials like Gates andErgle are only following the lead of elected offi-cials and appointed policymakers. War imageryand the endorsement of indiscriminate, mili-tary battle tactics for the War on Drugs hasbecome common in political discourse. Forexample, the nation’s first Drug Czar, WilliamBennett, recommended in 1989 that the UnitedStates abolish habeas corpus for drug offend-ers.128 “It’s a funny war when the ‘enemy’ is enti-tled to due process of law and a fair trial,”Bennett later told Fortune magazine.129 On theLarry King Show Bennett suggested that drugdealers be publicly beheaded.130

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan issueda directive declaring illicit drugs a threat tonational security. “We’re taking down thesurrender flag that has flown over so manydrug efforts,” Reagan said. “We’re runningup a battle flag.”131 In the same speech, helikened the drug war to the World War I bat-tle of Verdun, an analogy that journalist DanBaum notes in his book Smoke and Mirrors isboth amusing and appropriate: “[T]he battleis famous for killing half a million people oneach side,” Verdun writes, “while resolvingabsolutely nothing.”132 Battle rhetoric con-tinued through the George H. W. Bush andClinton administrations and certainly con-tinues through the current Bush administra-tion, which has run national ad campaignsequating recreational drug use with supportfor international terrorism.

Given such rhetoric, it isn’t all that sur-prising when civilian agencies police drugcrimes like soldiers instead of peacekeepersand treat civilians like combatants instead ofcitizens with rights. Under Bennett’s reign asDrug Czar, cities like Boston declared theequivalent of a state of war in some areas(mostly inhabited by minorities), with all theaccompanying civil liberties restrictions. One

judge criticized Boston’s efforts as “a procla-mation of martial law . . . for a narrow class ofpeople—young blacks.” Baum reports thatBennett was supportive of such efforts,attributing them to “the overriding spirit ofour front-line drug enforcement officers—which we should be extremely reluctant torestrict within formal and arbitrary lines.”133

Twenty-five years of an infusion of militaryhardware, training, and tactics has also trainedpolice officers—particularly SWAT officersand drug police—to adopt the win-at-all-costsmentality of a soldier. The Hoover Insti-tution’s Joseph McNamara, a former policechief for Kansas City, Missouri, and San Jose,California, told the National Journal in 2000that he’s seen the battle mentality on displayat the increasing number of SWAT conven-tions and SWAT competitions now heldacross the country. Speaking about a trip to arecent NTOA convention, McNamara said:“Officers at the conference were wearing thesevery disturbing shirts. On the front, there werepictures of SWAT officers dressed in dark uni-forms, wearing helmets, and holding subma-chine guns. Below was written: ‘We don’t dodrive-by shootings.’ On the back, there was apicture of a demolished house. Below waswritten: ‘We stop.’”134

Peter Kraska saw similar attitudes whiledoing field research with paramilitary units.As officers trained in preparation for the for-mation of a regional paramilitary unit in theMidwest and shot at “head-sized jugs ofwater,” one officer wore a T-shirt emblazonedwith an image of a city in flames. Beneath itwere the words, “Operation: Ghetto Storm.”135

The two military reserve officers who con-ducted the training operation offered Kraska aglimpse into the minds of the civilian policeofficers they were training. “This shit [the cre-ation of paramilitary units] is going on allover. Why serve an arrest warrant to somecrack dealer with a .38?” one told Kraska.“With full armor, the right shit [pointing to asmall case that contained a nine-millimeterGlock], and training, you can kick ass andhave fun.” The other officer added, “Most ofthese guys just like to play war; they get a rush

17

“With anynation, youalways have toprepare for thethreat of war. . . .My war is on thestreets, fightingthe criminals.”

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out of search-and-destroy missions instead ofthe bullshit they do regularly.”136 AnotherSWAT commander told Kraska, referring tohis unit, “When the soldiers ride in, youshould see those blacks scatter.”137

Such us-versus-them, search-and-destroysentiment has been on display in a number ofincidents in which drug agents have invadedentire streets, city blocks, and even entiretowns in drug interdiction efforts, whichcommonly include no-knock raids. In 1998,more than 90 police officers in San Franciscoin full SWAT attire raided 13 apartments inthe city’s Martin Luther King–Marcus Garveyhousing co-op. Police blew doors off theirhinges, deployed flashbang grenades, and,according to residents, slapped, beat, andstepped on the necks of the people inside.Police put gun muzzles against the heads ofsome occupants. One family’s pet dog wasshot in front of its owners, then dragged out-side and shot again. Children as young as sixwere handcuffed, which Police Chief FredLau said was to done to prevent them from“running around.” The raid was apparentlyconducted to scare and intimidate a localgang.138

In the late 1990s, things got so bad inAlbuquerque, New Mexico, the city had tohire an outside investigator. After a series ofbotched drug raids and shootings such as theLarry Harper suicide call, the city hiredUniversity of Nebraska criminologist SamWalker to conduct an investigation of thecity’s police tactics. Walker was astounded.“The rate of killings by police was just off thecharts,” Walker would later report. TheSWAT team “had an organizational culturethat led them to escalate situations upwardrather than de-escalating.”139 In response toWalker’s and the city’s own investigation,Albuquerque hired a new police chief, JerryGalvin. Galvin immediately concluded that acity of some 400,000 didn’t need a full-timeparamilitary unit. He also began to demilita-rize the city’s police force and instill a sense ofcommunity policing. Galvin told the NewYork Times in 1999, “If cops have a mind-setthat the goal is to take out a citizen, it will

happen.”140 In 1999, Albuquerque also insti-tuted a crisis counseling division in lieu ofthe SWAT team to handle suicides anddomestic disputes.141

Reforms in places like New Haven andAlbuquerque have unfortunately been theexception. Much of the rest of the country hasmarched forth with police militarization. Theweapons, training, and federal money are toolucrative to turn down. And once they’veacquired the equipment and training, policeofficials feel compelled to put it to use. Lt.Tom Gabor of the Culver City, California,police department began noticing the phe-nomenon in the early 1990s and criticized thepractice in a 1993 article for the FBI’s LawEnforcement Bulletin. Gabor wrote that increas-es in the deployments of SWAT teams havemore to do with “justifying the costs of main-taining units” than with ensuring public safe-ty. Even back in the early 1990s, Gabornoticed, “In many organizations, patrol lead-ers feel pressured to call for SWAT assistanceon borderline cases, even though field supervi-sors believe that patrol personnel could resolvethe incident.”142

And the trend continues. In 2003, police inGoose Creek, South Carolina, conducted aschoolwide commando-style raid on StratfordHigh School. Police lined students face downon the floor at gunpoint while officerssearched their lockers and persons for drugs.Some were handcuffed. Police dogs sniffedstudents, lockers, and backpacks. The incidentmade national news and was captured onvideotape by the school’s security cameras. It’sdifficult to see why such tactics were necessary.Police found no illegal drugs, and the schoolwas described in media reports as having oneof the best academic reputations in thestate.143 The principal of the school laterresigned, and the city recently settled a class-action suit with the affected students.144

Another troubling development is the useof SWAT teams and other paramilitary unitsto search and arrest medical marijuana andprescription painkiller offenders. In somecases, these people are abiding by state law, oreven working for the state. Yet the federal

18

“The rate ofkillings by police

was just off thecharts,” Walker

would laterreport. The SWAT

team “had anorganizational

culture that ledthem to escalate

situations upwardrather than

de-escalating.”

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government insists not only on prosecutingthem, but on using SWAT teams to arrestthem. It’s difficult to understand why SWATteams and paramilitary tactics are necessaryto apprehend sick patients, convalescent cen-ter workers, and white-collar doctors. But it’scommon practice.

On September 5, 2002, for example, aDEA SWAT team clad in flak jackets andarmed with M-16s raided the Wo/Men’sAlliance for Medical Marijuana, a treatmentcenter operated by medical marijuanaactivists Michael and Valerie Corral. Onepatient there, Suzanne Pfeil, who sufferedfrom post-polio symptoms, awoke in her bedto find five federal agents pointing assaultweapons at her head. When agents yelled ather to get up from the bed, Pfeil respondedthat she wasn’t physically able. They orderedher up again. Again, she answered that shecouldn’t. The agents handcuffed Pfeil to herbed and proceeded to search her belongings.Pfeil, who is allergic to most pharmaceuticaldrugs, uses marijuana for the muscle andnerve pain brought on by her condition.145

Since the DEA has begun targeting physi-cians who the agency believes are prescribingtoo many prescription painkillers, these sus-pects too are generally apprehended andarrested by paramilitary units, despite thefact that most all of them are white-collar,professional doctors in private practice, withno history of violence. The Village Voicereported in 2003 that the DEA’s tacticsinclude “storming [pain treatment clinics] inSWAT-style gear, ransacking offices, andhauling doctors off in handcuffs.”146

Dr. Cecil Knox of Roanoke, Virginia, is oneexample. When federal agents came to arrestKnox for overprescribing prescription pain-killers, they stormed his office in flak jackets.A clinic employee reported: “I thought I wasgoing to die. My husband was helping outthat day, and a DEA agent came in and point-ed a gun at his head and said, ‘Get off thephone, now.’”147 The Voice reported that inJune 2003, DEA agents raided a Dallas painclinic, where they “kicked own doors, ran-sacked the office, and handcuffed patients,

including an elderly woman with a strollerand an oxygen tank.”148 And when federalagents arrested pain specialist Dr. WilliamHurwitz after years of investigation, they didso with 20 paramilitary agents who raided hishome with assault weapons and arrested himin front of his two young daughters.149

David Brushwood, a pharmacy scholarand expert on pain care at the University ofFlorida, says that where federal agents onceworked with doctors to single out problempatients, they now go after doctors withSWAT teams. Agents “watch as a small prob-lem becomes a much larger problem. Theywait, and when there is a large problem thatcould have been caught before it got large,they bring the SWAT team in with bullet-proof vests and M16s, and they mercilesslyenforce the law,” Brushwood told onereporter.150

It’s difficult to come up with a reason whysuch brazen shows of force against suspectswho pose no risk of violence and present nothreat of harm to anyone around themwould be necessary, other than simply tointimidate. This, again, is a trait more associ-ated with an occupying army than with acivilian police force.

Why Paramilitary Drug Raids AreProblematic

Escalation of Violence. The most obviouscriticism of paramilitary drug raids is that,contrary to assertions from proponents thatthey minimize the risk of violence, they actu-ally escalate provocation and bring unneces-sary violence to what would otherwise be aroutine, nonviolent police procedure. SWATteams typically serve drug warrants justbefore dawn, or late at night. They enter resi-dences unannounced, or just seconds afterannouncing. Targets, then, are suddenlyawoken from sleep, and confronted with theprospect that their homes are being invaded.Police sometimes deploy diversionary devicessuch as flashbang grenades, designed tocause temporary blindness and deafness,intentionally compounding the confusion.

It isn’t difficult to see why a gun owner’s

19

It isn’t difficult to see why a gunowner’s firstinstinct uponwaking undersuch conditionswould be to reachfor a weapon todefend himself.

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first instinct upon waking under such condi-tions would be to disregard whatever theintruders may be screaming at him, andreach for a weapon to defend himself. Evenpublic officials have expressed that senti-ment. In 1992, police in Venice, Illinois, mis-takenly raided the wrong home on a paramil-itary narcotics raid. Fortunately, no one washome. But the house turned out to be thehome of Tyrone Echols, Venice’s mayor. “Totell the truth, I don’t remember what theysaid because I was furious,” Echols told theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch. “If I’d been here andheard that going on I probably would havetaken my pistol and shot through the door.I’d probably be dead. And some of the offi-cers would probably be dead, too.”151

Even former police officers have instinc-tively reached for their weapons when SWATteams have mistakenly entered their homeson faulty, no-knock search warrants.152 Sohave many civilians—some guilty of drugcrimes, some completely innocent—who werethen shot and killed by police officers whounderstandably mistook an otherwise nonvi-olent suspect’s attempt to defend himself asan act of aggression. Should a suspect or anyoccupant of the residence be asleep in a roomfar away from the point of entry, or perhapson another floor, it’s not difficult to see howhe might be awoken by the commotion butnot hear the announcement that the intrud-ers are police (assuming such an announce-ment was made in the first place).

The intentionally inflicted confusion anddisorientation, the forced entry into thehome, and the overwhelming show of force,then, make these raids excessively volatile,dangerous, and confrontational. Were theyonly utilized against violent criminals whopose an immediate threat to the communityand public safety, one could argue that theirutility outweighed their risk. But the vastmajority of paramilitary raids are executedagainst drug offenders, and many of thoseagainst marijuana offenders with no historyof violence. Which means that far fromdefusing violent situations, most SWAT raidsactually create them.

Posing as Police. Another problem withmilitary-style, late-night drug raids is thatthere’s good reason for civilians to suspectlate night intruders aren’t police. Spurred onin part by the frequent nature and popular-ization of surprise drug raids, it is notuncommon for criminals to disguise them-selves as raiding police to gain entry intohomes and businesses.

One infamous example took place in 1994,when a group of men entered the home ofLisa Renee and abducted her as retributionfor a drug deal, which they’d conducted withher brothers, gone wrong. In a chilling 911call, as Renee pleads with the operator to sendhelp, one of the men announces through thedoor that he’s the “FBI.” Renee says to theoperator, “Oh, they’re the FBI.” One intruderthen says, “Open the door and we’ll talk.”Renee says again, “They’re the FBI. They saythey’re the FBI, ma’am,” and opens the door.The call ends with screaming.153 The men kid-napped Renee, raped and beat her over thenext several days, then buried her alive in ashallow grave.154 Given its sensational ele-ments, the Renee case is perhaps the mostfamous case of armed intruders posing aspolice. But it’s by no means the only example.New York City alone reports more than 1,000cases each year of people pretending to bepolice officers, many of them in attempts torob homes and businesses.155 Here are just afew examples from recent headlines:

• In January 2006, Jonathan Dodson ofDes Moines, Iowa, was charged withimpersonating a public official in bur-glary after he and another man gainedentry to a home by claiming to be U.S.Marshals.156

• In October 2005, a couple in ClayCounty, Kansas, broke into a 79-year-old man’s home while pretending to bepolice officers. They ransacked hishome and stole a wallet, credit cards,and two bottles of medication.157

• On July 15, 2005, two intruders claimedto be police officers to gain entry to ahome in Oak Park, Michigan. Once

20

Far from defusing violentsituations, most

SWAT raids actually create

them.

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inside, the assailants forced residents tothe floor and made off with cash, jewel-ry, and a shotgun.158

• On November 29, 2005, two men stageda fake drug raid while holding up a resi-dence in Syracuse, New York. Authoritiesbelieve the men had conducted similarphony raids four or five times before.159

• In January 2005, an Alexandria, Virginia,lawyer was dragged from his home bythree gunmen, who gained access aftertelling the man’s son they were police.Kenneth Labowitz was kidnapped aftergunmen—still claiming to be federalagents—shocked his wife with a stun gun.Labowitz was beaten, hit with a stun gun,and taken to a remote area where themen said they had already prepared hisgrave. Labowitz eventually escaped, andthe gunmen were prosecuted.160

• In October 2004, five men pretending tobe police invaded a home near Collier-ville, Tennessee. The men broke open thedoor at 3 a.m., then yelled “FBI!” tothrow the couple inside off-guard. Allwere wearing black shirts emblazonedwith the word “POLICE.” Michael andKatrina Perry were then bound, beaten,and tortured. The intruders then search-ed the home for valuables and left in thecouple’s SUV.161

• In July 2004, several men stormed ahome near Houston, Texas, screaming“HPD, HPD!” referring to the HoustonPolice Department. Once inside, theytook cash and jewelry and shot both ofthe home’s occupants. One was grazed,the other was critically injured.162

• In January 2003, at 1 a.m. on a Sunday,several men in ski masks claiming to bepolice knocked on a window, then brokeopen the door to a home in Edinburg,Texas. It was the latest in a string of inci-dents in which drug dealers had brokeninto homes posing as police on fakedrug raids. Once inside, the men tied upsix young men they found inside and inan adjacent shed and shot them todeath.163

These are just a few examples. There aredozens more from just the last severalyears.164

Informants and Forfeiture. An overwhelm-ing number of mistaken raids take placebecause police relied on information fromconfidential informants. These informantsare notoriously unreliable. Most tend to bedrug dealers themselves looking to knock offcompetitors, convicted criminals or chargedsuspects looking to trade information for areduction in sentence or less serious charges,or professional informants who get a cut ofany money or assets seized. After a 1998“wrong door” raid on an elderly couple inNew York City, for example, one police sourcetold the New York Times that the informant inthe case, one described in police affidavits asreliable, wasn’t so reliable after all. Just 44 per-cent of the tips he’d given police over the yearshad produced actual drug evidence.165

A 1999 investigation by the Chicago Tribunedetailed dozens of cases in which jailhouseinformants blatantly lied to win shortenedsentences, some in cases that resulted in thedeath penalty.166

Police routinely secure warrants for para-military drug raids on the basis of a tip froma single, confidential informant, many ofwhom are paid, or rewarded with leniency intheir own criminal cases. Back in 1995,National Law Journal estimated that moneypaid to informants jumped from $25 millionin 1985 to about $97 million in 1993.167 It’ssafe to assume that number’s significantlyhigher now. Those figures also don’t includemoney seized by police from drug suspects, aportion of which often gets filtered back toinformants. In a scathing editorial, the publi-cation warned, “Criminals have been turnedinto instruments of law enforcement, whilelaw enforcement officers have become crimi-nal co-conspirators.” The piece warned thatjudges weren’t doing a satisfactory job of ver-ifying the credibility of informants, some ofwhom are “invented out of whole cloth.”168

One of the more egregious examples of howthe informant system can lead to tragedy is thecase of Pedro Oregon Navarro. In the summer

21

An overwhelmingnumber of mistaken raidstake placebecause policerelied on informationfrom confidentialinformants.

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of 1998, two police officers in Houston pulledover a car with three men inside. One of themwas subsequently arrested for public intoxica-tion. Already on probation, the suspect cameup with a bargain for the arresting officers.He’d give them a tip on a drug dealer if they’dlet him off. They agreed. The man made up astory and gave police Navarro’s address. At 1:40a.m., six police from the city’s anti-gang taskforce raided Navarro’s house. The informantknocked on the door, and Navarro’s brother-in-law answered. At that point, the officersstormed Navarro’s bedroom, where the manawoke, startled and frightened, and reached forhis gun. Police opened fire. They shot Navarro12 times, killing him. Navarro never fired hisgun.169 The officers who shot Navarro wereeventually terminated. In August 2005, two ofthem applied for reinstatement, adding thatthey’d hoped to be “vindicated” in the Navarroshooting.170

Rev. Accelyne Williams is perhaps themost infamous case of a bad tip leading to afatally flawed no-knock raid. Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister, died of a heartattack on March 25, 1994, after strugglingwith 13 members of a heavily armed BostonSWAT team that had stormed his apartmentin black masks.171 One police source told theBoston Herald, “Everything was done right,except it was the wrong apartment.”172

Police later discovered that an informanthad given them incorrect information. TheHerald reported:

A warrant authorizing the raid wasapproved by Suffolk County AssistantDistrict Attorney Mary Lou Moran,even though the application supportingthe warrant did not specify which apart-ment on the building’s second floor wasto be targeted. It also failed to provideany corroboration of the confidentialinformant’s tip that a Jamaican drugposse operated out of the building.173

One police source told the Herald: “You’dbe surprised at how easily this can happen.An informant can tell you it is the apartment

on the left at the top of the stairs and therecould be two apartments on the left at thetop of the stairs. Or people could rent roomswithin an apartment that the informantdoesn’t know about. You are supposed to ver-ify it, and I’m not making excuses, but mis-takes can be made.”174

A week after the Williams raid, mediainvestigations discovered that three of theofficers involved had been accused in a 1989civil rights suit of using nonexistent infor-mants to secure drug warrants. The three haderroneously raided the home of Jean-Claudeand Ermite David in 1989, resulting in a$50,000 settlement from the city of Boston.According to one witness, Philbin apologizedas officers were leaving the scene, telling thehome’s occupants, “This happens all thetime.”175 Five years before the Williams raid,Boston detective Sherman C. Griffiths waskilled in another late night drug raid gonewrong. A jury acquitted the man who shotGriffiths when Detective Carlos A. Luna con-fessed that, to speed up the warrant process,he had made up the informant whose allegedtip led to the raid.176

In the fall of 1995, the First Circuit Courtof Appeals affirmed the conviction of a manon charges precipitated by an informant butwarned of the increasing abuse of the infor-mant system. Appellate Judge Michael Boudincautioned:

In his dual role as both instigator andwitness, the informant has a specialcapacity—as well as strong incentive—totilt both the event itself and his testi-mony about it. If the government isgoing to use its informants in a role justshort of provocateur, it would be welladvised to consider devising restric-tions that will at least lessen the likeli-hood for abuse. Otherwise, the lessonof history is that the courts themselvesare likely to take precautions and theiradjustments are usually more rigid andfar-reaching.177

On the heels of that warning, following the

22

According to onewitness, Philbin

apologized asofficers were

leaving the scene,telling the home’s occupants, “This

happens all the time.”

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Accelyne Williams and Sherman Griffithscases, the Boston Globe ran a story in 1995 thatprofiled several men who lived entirely off ofthe fees they collected as police informantsand who, consequently, often used entrap-ment to generate new tips for police.178 Otherexamples of informant corruption abound,including these recent examples:

• In 2005, Oregon’s News-Register ran alengthy profile of career informant MarcCraven, who befriended immigrants andother low-wage workers, then temptedthem with promises of high-paying con-struction jobs if they could find him smallamounts of marijuana or methampheta-mine. In some cases, he badgered his tar-gets for weeks, playing off their dreams ofa better life, then tipped off police whenhis targets managed to get him minusculeamounts of illicit drugs.179

• In 2005, the Denver Post reported thatthe Denver DEA had an ongoing rela-tionship with an informant dating backto 1993, and continued to let the infor-mant deal drugs as he gave up rival deal-ers. By 2003, the local U.S. Attorney’soffice had become concerned enoughwith informant Gerardo Guitierrez-Velazquez’s credibility that they told theDEA they would stop prosecuting casesbased on tips that originated with him.Of course, by that time, Velazquez hadalready put several people in prison.180

• In 2004, Riverside County, California,prosecutors had to review more than 15convictions after it was revealed that aconfidential informant routinely usedin narcotics sting operations had beenkept secret from judges. Among othertransgressions, the informant allegedlyplanted drugs in a suspect’s car, thensmashed one of the car’s taillights togive police reason to pull the suspectover. Prosecutors insisted on keepingthe informant secret despite the factthat serious questions arose about hiscredibility in a number of cases. “TheDA resisted every attempt we made to

identify the informant even though itwas clear from the beginning that hewas a material witness,” one defenselawyer told the Associated Press.181 Theinformant problems came to light aftera Riverside officer was implicated in anincident in which an informant was per-mitted to steal money from a drug sus-pect. In the ensuing investigation, onedetective said informants routinelyplayed key roles in drug raids, and pros-ecutors and defense attorneys were keptin the dark about their involvement.182

• In 2001, a scandal broke in Dallas inwhich a police drug informant had beenplanting fake cocaine on dozens ofMexican immigrants. Dallas policewould then conduct field tests on the“drug,” which in many cases was ground-up billiards chalk. Miraculously, testsrepeatedly showed the substance to becocaine. After the scandal broke, investi-gators found more than 80 cases thathad been manufactured by the infor-mant. He made $1,000 for every kilo ofcocaine seized from his tips.183 Only onestreet-level detective was charged in thecase, and he was later acquitted in federalcourt. The subsequent city investigation,closed to the public and conducted bycity officials and no outside investigators,was described by one journalist as “atight-lipped whitewash.”184 In 2005, theDallas Morning News reported that threeyears before the scandal a police lieu-tenant had issued a blistering report onthe Dallas Police Department’s infor-mant system, noting that informantswere frequently paid under false SocialSecurity numbers, some informants werenever documented at all, and in manycases, supervisor signatures approvingthe use of informants were forged, post-dated, or never obtained at all.185

One can’t help but wonder why so manycases of bad warrants based on bad informa-tion from unreliable informants get by thejudges and magistrates the U.S. criminal jus-

23

One can’t helpbut wonder whyso many cases ofbad warrantsbased on badinformationfrom unreliableinformants get bythe judges andmagistrates.

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tice system entrusted with safeguarding theFourth Amendment. In truth, the processhas become little more than a rubber stampexercise.

The 2003 botched New York City raid thatkilled Alberta Spruill was also based on infor-mation from a confidential informant. Foryears, activists, citizens, and media outlets hadwarned about the city’s reliance on informantsbefore conducting such volatile raids. This wasparticularly true of the city’s CivilianComplaint Review Board, billed as an agencydesigned to act on citizen complaints of policebrutality. Review board members were grow-ing increasingly concerned about botcheddrug raids emanating from faulty informanttips but were powerless to do anything aboutit. A New York Times article warned about theincreasing number of no-knock police raidsand use of confidential informants. It waspublished five years before the raid ending inAlberta Spruill’s death:

Confidential informers—called snitch-es and rats by the narcotics officerswho depend on them—are a central, iflittle-discussed, weapon in the war ondrugs. Since the apartments manydrug dealers now use are difficult anddangerous to infiltrate, investigatorshave come to rely more and more ontheir underworld contacts. Interviewswith police officials, prosecutors,judges, and lawyers paint a picture of asystem in which police officers feelpressured to conduct more raids, tipsfrom confidential informants areincreasingly difficult to verify, andjudges spend less time examining theincreasing number of applications forsearch warrants before signing them.186

There isn’t much data available on justhow often judges or prosecutors turn downsearch warrants because of the untrustwor-thiness of a confidential informant or onhow often they turn down drug search war-rants in general. But most criminal justiceexperts agree that it’s rare.

One study of Chicago-area judges, prose-cutors, drug police, and public defendersconducted in 1992 by University ofMinnesota law professor Myron Orfield, forexample, suggests that the system of admin-istering search warrants is far from the care-ful balance of crime control and civil libertiesmany Americans might envision.187 Orfieldfound that more than a fifth of Chicagojudges believe police lie in court more thanhalf the time when it comes to FourthAmendment issues. Ninety-two percent ofjudges said police lie “at least some of thetime.” Thirty-eight percent of judges saidthey believe police superiors encourage sub-ordinates to lie in court. More than 50 per-cent of respondents believed that at least“half of the time” the prosecutor “knows orhas reason to know” that police fabricate evi-dence at suppression hearings. Another 93percent (including 89 percent of the prosecu-tors) reported that prosecutors had knowl-edge of perjury “at least some of the time.”Sixty-one percent of respondents, includinghalf of the surveyed prosecutors, believedthat prosecutors know or have reason toknow that police fabricate evidence in casereports, and half of prosecutors believe thesame to be true when it comes to warrants.Prosecutors also described several techniquesin dealing with police that would probablysurprise much of the public, including artic-ulating cases to police in terms such as, “ifthis happens, we win. If this happens, welose.”188

A 2000 Denver Post investigation foundthat judges exercise almost no discretion atall when it comes to issuing no-knock war-rants. The Post found that Denver judges haddenied just five of 163 no-knock applicationsover a 12-month period (local defense attor-neys were surprised to learn there were evenfive).189 “No-knock search warrants appear tobe approved so routinely that some Denverjudges have issued them even though policeasked only for a regular warrant,” the Postwrote. “In fact, more than one of every 10no-knock warrants issued over the past sevenmonths was transformed from a regular warrant

24

A 2000 Denver Postinvestigation

found that judgesexercise almost no

discretion at allwhen it comes toissuing no-knock

warrants.

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with just a judge’s signature.”190 Among thepaper’s other findings:

• In 8 of 10 raids, police assertions in affi-davits that weapons would be presentturned out to be wrong.

• Just 7 of the 163 affidavits for no-knockwarrants offered specific allegations thata suspect had actually been seen with agun, evidence that’s essential to procur-ing a no-knock warrant. Even here, policefound weapons in just two of the sevensearches.

• About one-third of the no-knock war-rants were never reviewed by a districtattorney before going to a judge, a viola-tion of the police department’s statedpolicy. Many of the prosecutor reviewsthat did take place took place over thetelephone.

• Nearly all of the warrants were for nar-cotics and were granted solely on the tipof an anonymous informant and anofficer’s assertion (minus any corrobo-rating evidence) that weapons would befound at the scene or that the suspectwas likely to dispose of evidence.191

Judge Robert Patterson, the presidingjudge for Denver’s criminal court system pro-vided an astonishing defense. “We are not thefact gatherers,” he said. “It’s pretty formulaichow it’s done. If you sign your name 100times, you can look away and sign in thewrong place. We read a lot of documents. Wemay, just like anyone else, sign somethingand realize later that it’s the wrong place orthe wrong thing. Is it wrong not to be payingattention? No. It’s just that we’re doingthings over and over again.”192

It’s difficult to say just how often SWATraids are precipitated on information fromconfidential informants, but anecdotal evi-dence suggests it’s disturbingly common. One1998 review in the Raleigh-Durham area, forexample, found that 87 percent of drug raidsin that city originated from tips from confi-dential informants.193

Asset Forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture gen-

erally refers to the policy that allows policedepartments to seize assets found in a drugraid, auction them off, then keep the pro-ceeds for the department’s budget, eventhough the property owner may never havebeen convicted of any crime. The policy cre-ates questionable incentives, invites corrup-tion, and can push departments to be extraaggressive in their drug policing, if for noother reason than to make up for budgetaryshortfalls or to outfit the department withamenities and equipment.194

In 1999, for example, the El Monte,California, police department conducted abotched drug raid in which police shot andkilled Mario Paz, an innocent grandfatherwho had no idea the men invading his homewere police. The El Monte police departmentwas renowned in California for its prowess inseizing cash and assets from drug raids. Evenafter Paz was determined to be innocent,police attempted to seize the $10,000 theyfound at the Paz home, invoking forfeiturelaws that put the burden of proof on the Pazfamily to show the money wasn’t earned fromdrug sales (the Paz family later producedreceipts confirming the money had beenobtained through legitimate means).195

Immediately after the Paz raid, El Monteassistant police chief Bill Ankeny said thatthough police had already nabbed their mainsuspect in the investigation, they nonethelesswent on to the Paz home “to further theinvestigation . . . to find further evidence andproceeds.” In the 10 years prior to the Pazraid, the small town’s police department hadseized some $4.5 million from drug sus-pects.196

Subsequent investigations also deter-mined forfeiture to be the main motivationbehind the raid on millionaire DonaldScott’s home in Malibu, California. Scott,who feared that authorities had designs ontaking his home, was gunned down in a jointno-knock drug raid conducted by severallocal police organizations. Police found noillicit drugs anywhere on Scott’s property.Friends of Scott’s would later tell reportersthat Scott in fact abhorred drug use.197

25

One 1998 reviewin the Raleigh-Durham areafound that 87 percent of drugraids originatedfrom tips fromconfidentialinformants.

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Asset forfeiture has a long and troublinghistory in drug cases and has been frequentlyand thoroughly assailed by critics. But it hasa unique application in the case of paramili-tary raids. SWAT teams are typically expen-sive to maintain. Federal grants and freeequipment get them up and running, butlocal departments are often then forced tofoot the costs of keeping members up to dateon tactics and weapons training as well as theupkeep of equipment. Because the more tra-ditional uses of SWAT teams—emergency sit-uations like barricades, hostage takings, andbank robberies—don’t bring lucrative forfei-ture opportunities (or federal funding),police officials feel increasing pressure tosend SWAT teams out on drug assignments,where the assets seized come back to thedepartment and can help offset the costs ofhaving a SWAT team in the first place. As theNew York Times summarized in a 1999 articleon SWAT proliferation:

Most of the [SWAT] squads stay inexistence because there is too muchincentive not to, police officers say.Forfeiture laws passed by Congress atthe height of the crack scare weredesigned to take the profit out of drugdealing; assets like cars, boats, guns,and cash can be seized, regardless ofwhether the person who owns them islater convicted.198

The trend of using SWAT teams for rou-tine drug policing, which then leads to forfei-ture funds used in turn to support the SWATteam, is common across the country.199

Raids Are Ineffective. Perhaps what’s mosttroubling about the use of no-knock andquick-knock raids is that for all the peril andconfrontation associated with them, the littleevidence available suggests they aren’t even allthat effective. The public scrutiny that fol-lowed the botched no-knock raid in Denverthat killed immigrant Ismael Mena in 2000,for example, enabled Denver’s Rocky MountainNews to get access to warrants and courtrecords for all of the no-knock raids conduct-

ed in the city in 1999. The paper’s findingswere alarming: Of 146 no-knock raids con-ducted in the city that year, only 49 producedcharges of any kind. And of those, just 2 result-ed in prison time for the targets of the raids.200

In comparison, the paper noted that while 21percent of the city’s felony defendants on aver-age are sent to prison, just 4 percent of its no-knock defendants were. One former prosecu-tor said of the results, “When you have thatviolent intrusion on people’s homes with solittle results, you have to ask why.” The RockyMountain News continued:

Almost all of the 1999 no-knock caseswere targeted at people suspected ofbeing drug dealers. . . . Often the tipswent unsubstantiated, and little in theway of narcotics was recovered. Theproblem doesn’t stem only from thework of inexperienced street cops, whichcity officials have maintained. Even vet-eran narcotics detectives sometimes seekno-knock warrants based on the word ofan informant and without conductingundercover buys to verify the tips.201

A 1997 investigation by the Palm Beach Postfound that in a sampling of 50 of the 309arrests made by Palm Beach County’s 12SWAT teams, the longest jail sentence metedout from any of the raids was five years. Thevast majority produced sentences of less thansix months, parole, or no sentence at all.202 Ofthe defendants actually found guilty, mostwere sentenced to less than six months in jail,suggesting they were hardly the hardened,violent, dangerous criminals police and pros-ecutors say require the use of a heavily forti-fied paramilitary team. Reporters found sim-ilar results in Orange County, Florida. A 1998Orlando Weekly investigation found thatSWAT raids resulted in actual arrests in just47 percent of callouts. A broader review ofteams in Orange, Osceola, Orlando, andMaitland, Florida, found that they’re typical-ly called out to serve warrants for crimes thatare misdemeanors, resulting in only smallfines, or no charges at all.203

26

Of 146 no-knockraids conducted

in Denver in 1999,only 49 produced

charges of anykind. And ofthose, just 2

resulted in prisontime for the

targets of theraids.

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After the New York City raid that killedAlberta Spruill, Police Chief Raymond Kellyestimated that at least 10 percent of the city’s450+ monthly no-knock drug raids wereserved on the wrong address, under badinformation, or otherwise didn’t produceenough evidence for an arrest. Kelly conced-ed, however, that NYPD didn’t keep carefultrack of botched raids, leading one city coun-cil member to speculate the problem couldbe even worse.204

More broadly, this increased militariza-tion of drug policing hasn’t done much todiminish either the drug supply or the use ofillicit drugs. The percentage of people report-ing illicit drug use in their lifetimes, forexample, rose from 31.3 percent in 1979 to35.8 percent in 1998. Between 1999 and2001, the figure went from 39.7 to 41.1 per-cent (data prior to 1998 aren’t comparable todata after 1998 due to changes in methodol-ogy).205 The percentage of college studentsreporting having used marijuana in the lastyear went from 27.9 percent in 1993 to 33.7percent in 2003; the number using in the pastmonth went from 14.2 percent to 19.3 per-cent; and the number reporting daily usewent from 1.9 percent to 4.7 percent. Therewere similar increases in percentages report-ing use of cocaine.206

Answering Proponents of Paramilitary DrugRaids. Supporters of the increased use of para-military tactics often say that such aggressivetactics are necessary because drug dealers areincreasingly arming themselves with heavierand more sophisticated weaponry. The onlyway to counter that trend, they say, is to keeppolice well ahead in the arms race, and to showoverwhelming force when serving drug searchand arrest warrants. Supporters often cite thedecreasing number of police shootings overthe last 20 years, and among SWAT teams inparticular, as evidence that increased milita-rization is working.

Of course, a reduction in police shootingscorrelating with a rise in SWAT teams doesn’tmean SWAT teams are responsible for thedecline in police shootings. It’s more likelythat the decline in police shootings and

shootings by police officers (if the latter isactually true, as will be discussed below) havecoincided with an overall drop in violentcrime over the last 15 years, a drop explainedin part by a strong economy, falling unem-ployment, and changing demographics.

Moreover, there’s simply not much evidencethat criminals are arming themselves withheavy weaponry. In a paper by David Kopel andEric Morgan published by the IndependenceInstitute in 1991, about a decade into the mili-tarization of civilian policing that began in1980, the authors point to a number of statis-tics showing that high-powered weapons,which are often cumbersome and difficult toconceal, simply aren’t favored by criminals,including drug peddlers.207 The authors sur-veyed dozens of cities and found that, in gener-al, less than 1 percent of weapons seized bypolice fit the definition of an “assault weapon.”Nationally, they found that fewer than 4 per-cent of homicides across the United Statesinvolved rifles of any kind. And fewer than one-eighth of 1 percent involved weapons of mili-tary caliber. Even fewer homicides involvedweapons commonly called “assault” weapons.The proportion of police fatalities caused byassault weapons was around 3 percent, a num-ber that remained relatively constant through-out the 1980s.208 It was during the 1980s thatSWAT teams first began to proliferate.

Kopel and Morgan also interviewed policefirearms examiners. The examiners in DadeCounty, Florida—home to Miami—for exam-ple, found that contrary to the Miami Vicedepiction of the South Florida drug trade inthe 1980s, the use of assault weapons inshootings and homicides in Miami was indecline throughout the decade. One lieu-tenant from the Washington, D.C., policedepartment told the authors that the pre-ferred weapon of criminals in the nation’scapital was the pistol.209

In 1995, the Justice Department released astudy showing that 86 percent of violentcrimes in the United States involved a hand-gun. The most popular weapon used in homi-cides at the time wasn’t an automatic weaponbut the large-caliber revolver. Just 3 percent of

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There’s simply notmuch evidencethat criminals are arming themselves withheavy weaponry.

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murders in 1993 were committed with rifles,and just 5 percent with shotguns.210

The 1997 Palm Beach Post investigationcited earlier also found that of the 309 arrestsmade by the 12 SWAT teams in Palm BeachCounty, Florida, only 60—or 19 percent—pro-duced weapons of any kind.211 A five-yearinvestigation in Orange County, Florida, inthe mid-1990s likewise found that just 13percent of SWAT raids turned up weapons ofany kind.212

Just before the federal assault weapons banwas set to expire in 2004, the National Institutefor Justice released a study looking at the use ofassault weapons in the commission of violentcrimes. Drawing on crime data from severalAmerican cities, the report found that assaultweapons were “rarely used in gun crimes, evenbefore the ban” was put in place. Moreover,because assault weapons are so rarely used bycriminals, it found that “should it be renewed,the ban’s effects on gun violence were likelysmall at best, and perhaps too small for reliablemeasurement.” The report also found that theuse of such high-powered weaponry to killpolice officers was “very rare.”213

As for alleged declines in shootings bypolice over the past 25 years, the truth is,there simply isn’t much data available. OneCBS News survey of SWAT encountersbetween 1994 and 1998 suggested a 34 per-cent increase in the use of deadly force bypolice over that five-year period.214 But trulycomprehensive data are difficult to come by.Just as police and prosecutors don’t keeptrack of botched paramilitary drug raids,they also don’t keep statistics on the numberof times police officers shoot at, strike, or killa suspect. As criminologist and University ofGeorgia law professor Donald Wilkes Jr.writes, “Although the government collectsand disseminates gigabytes of crime statisticson crimes or acts of violence committed bycitizens against other citizens, or by citizensagainst police, there are hardly any officialstatistics on crimes or acts of violence com-mitted against citizens by police.”215

The New York Times reported in 2001,“Despite widespread public interest and a

provision in the 1994 Crime Control Actrequiring the attorney general to collect thedata and publish an annual report on them,statistics on police shootings and use of non-deadly force continue to be piecemeal prod-ucts of spotty collection, and are dependenton the cooperation of local police depart-ments.” The paper added, “No comprehen-sive accounting for all the nation’s 17,000police departments exists.”216

Despite the 1994 law requiring the federalgovernment to compile data on policing shoot-ings, Attorney General Janet Reno acknowl-edged in 1999 that there’s no federal lawrequiring local police agencies to provide it.And many haven’t.217 University of SouthCarolina criminology professor GeoffreyAlpert called the lack of reporting “a nationalscandal,” adding, “These are public servantswho work for us and are paid to protect us.”218

While it’s far from clear that it should be a fed-eral undertaking, Alpert is correct that weshould demand accountability and trans-parency from local police departments when itcomes to police shootings and use of force.

Of course, if it’s true that the percentageof SWAT shootings in relation to the totalnumber of callouts is low or in decline, a bigreason for that would be that SWAT teamsare increasingly being called out to appre-hend nonviolent offenders. In other words,measuring the percentage of times a SWATcallout leads to the discharge of a weapon isprobably not the best way to measure theharm done by the increasing use of SWATteams. If SWAT teams were limited to therole originally envisioned for them, and thatcritics recommend for them—volatile, dan-gerous situations in which a suspect posed adirect and immediate threat to the commu-nity—one would expect the percentage ofcallouts leading to some sort of gunfire to behigh, not low.

Measuring the threat posed by paramili-tary raids solely in terms of the number ofpolice shootings, then, misses the point.There’s harm done each time a SWAT teamraids the home of an innocent person or fam-ily, even if no deaths or serious injuries result.

28

There’s harmdone each time a

SWAT team raidsthe home of an

innocent personor family, even if

no deaths or serious injuries

result.

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There’s also harm done when the raid isdirected at the correct home of a nonviolentoffender who poses no real threat to the com-munity. Recreational marijuana users arebreaking the law, but the offense certainlydoesn’t merit their homes being invaded by abattalion of police officers.

The massive increase in SWAT calloutsover the last two decades ought to be of con-cern for reasons other than the fact that itpresents more opportunities for a botchedraid on an innocent person to end in gunfire.It represents the needless terrorizing ofAmerican citizens and an increased percep-tion that the drug war is just that: a war. Itsuggests that in terms of civil liberties,American citizens are given little more con-sideration than the citizens of a country withwhich the United Sates is at war: No realrights or protections against unwarrantedsearches, and in some neighborhoods, thereal possibility that lives and homes couldbecome collateral damage. It’s striking howmany police and government officials haveresponded to paramilitary raids on thehomes of innocents by dismissing them asregrettable, but inevitable and acceptable,consequences of the War on Drugs.

A final, similar argument from supportersof paramilitary police squads is that even ifbotched raids occur as frequently as criticssuggest, they’re still a very small percentageof the total number of raids executed. Ofcourse, even a small percentage of the 40,000annual SWAT callouts is a large number.Taking such thinking to its logical conclu-sion, we could double or triple or quadruplethe number of SWAT callouts, or expandthem to include policing for misdemeanorcrimes and traffic offenses, so long as theoverall percentage of innocents harmedremains low. One police chief responded tocriticisms of his department’s botched drugraids by observing that he’d only see reasonfor concern if the number of botched para-military raids approached 25 percent or moreof the total number of raids.219 Such think-ing is the recipe for a police state. The idea ofsending battalions of men dressed, trained,

and armed like soldiers to do civilian policework should give us great discomfort. It’s nota tactic that should be employed by free soci-eties except in the imminent peril situationsdiscussed earlier.

The American criminal justice system isrooted in the principle that every citizen hascertain rights and protections, and the gov-ernment is obligated to respect those rights,even when doing so proves inconvenient tobroader crime control goals.

Legal Background

The roots of the common law principlethat a man has the right to defend his homeas his castle, and that police should announcethemselves before entering private residences,are generally accepted to extend back to 17th-century English common law, as recognizedin Semayne’s Case.220 The common law haslong recognized a man’s home as his “castle ofdefence and asylum” and requires authoritiesto identify themselves before entering. But inthe United States, that principle has comeunder attack.221

It took nearly four decades after its firstknock-and-announce case in 1958 for theSupreme Court to finally affirm that thecommon-law principle of announced entry isingrained in the Fourth Amendment.222

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a unani-mous opinion in the landmark 1995 caseWilson v. Arkansas that the “common-law‘knock and announce’ principle forms a partof the reasonableness inquiry under theFourth Amendment,” adding that while “thecommon-law principle of announcement is‘embedded in Anglo-American law,’ . . . wehave never squarely held that this principle isan element of the reasonableness inquiry. Wenow so hold.”223

Unfortunately, in the same opinion, theCourt created significant exceptions to theannouncement requirement (exceptions that,admittedly, also share a long tradition in com-mon law). Just after holding that the principleof knock-and-announce is embedded in the

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The massiveincrease in SWAT calloutsrepresents theneedless terrorizing ofAmerican citizensand an increasedperception thatthe drug war isjust that: a war.

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Fourth Amendment, Justice Thomas laid outa series of “exigent circumstances” underwhich police could skip the requirement andenter a home unannounced. The first excep-tion concerns searches in which police reason-ably believe that announcing themselves couldimperil the safety of police officers. The sec-ond allows entry without announcementwhen police are pursuing a fleeing suspectinto a home. And the third exception is whenan announcement would give suspects theopportunity to destroy important evidence.224

The Court has largely left it up to the statesto hash out when these circumstances exist.Most states have since shown an unhealthydeference to the judgment of police officers atthe scene of a search and subsequently put fewreal restraints on the proliferation of heavilyarmed no-knock or short-notice execution ofsearch warrants. In effect, the exceptions toknock-and-announce have overwhelmed therule.225

The federal statute governing “knock andannounce” procedures states that an officermay forcibly enter a home “if, after notice ofhis authority and purpose, he is refusedadmittance.”226

In the 1998 U.S. v. Ramirez, the SupremeCourt found that the “exigent circumstances”exceptions Thomas articulated in Wilson arepart of the federal statute, even though thestatute itself doesn’t specifically mentionthem.227 The Court reasoned that the absenceof language outlining the exigency exceptionsin the federal law doesn’t mean Congress did-n’t intend for those exceptions to be available.The Court concluded that the law is intendedto broaden police authority, not to limit it.228

The two circumstances under whichpolice may enter a home unannounced mostpertinent to this paper are the “destructionof evidence” exception and the “apprehen-sion of peril” exception. They’re worth con-sidering separately.

Destruction of EvidenceUntil 1997, courts had generally taken

two approaches in establishing parameters tothe “destruction of evidence” exception. The

first, often called the “blanket approach,”assumes that certain kinds of evidence, drugsor bookkeeping records, for example, are bytheir very nature susceptible to destructionupon a police knock at the door. Therefore,such cases create a per se exception for anywarrants involving evidence that’s easilydestroyed. Until the mid-1990s, severalstates, including Wisconsin, issued no-knockwarrants on just about any case involvingnarcotics.

In the 1997 case Richards v. Wisconsin, theSupreme Court repudiated the blanketapproach.229 The Court overturned a Wiscon-sin law stipulating that police could breakdown a suspect’s door without announcingthemselves in any search or arrest warrant per-taining to possession or distribution of drugs.Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “If a per seexception were allowed for each category ofcriminal investigation that included a consid-erable—albeit hypothetical—risk of danger toofficers or destruction of evidence, the knock-and-announce element of the Fourth Amend-ment’s reasonableness requirement would bemeaningless.”230

Even in ending one bad policy, however,Richards created a new one. After strikingdown the blanket policy, the Court struck ablow against judicial oversight over the initi-ation of no-knock and knock-and-announceraids, writing that “a magistrate’s decisionnot to authorize a no-knock entry should notbe interpreted to remove the officers’ author-ity to exercise independent judgment con-cerning the wisdom of a non-knock entry atthe time the warrant is being executed.”231

Perhaps most disturbing, the Court found inRichards that police only need to have “rea-sonable suspicion” that one of the three exi-gent circumstances exists, and that the stan-dard of evidence for “reasonable suspicion” is“not high.”232

The net effect of Richards, then, is to giveextraordinary leeway to police in determiningat the scene whether or not to execute asearch warrant without first announcingthemselves, regardless of instructions from acourt. Like Wilson, the decision in Richards,

30

Most states have shown an

unhealthy deference to the

judgment ofpolice officers

and put few realrestraints on theproliferation of

heavily armed no-knock orshort-notice execution of

search warrants.

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while on its face an obstacle to no-knockraids, in effect made them easier to execute.

Of course, states are free to pass their ownrestrictions limiting the use of no-knockentries. But local police departments can—and have—gotten around those restrictionssimply by bringing federal agents along onraids, thereby invoking the less restrictive fed-eral laws.233

After Richards, courts fell back on the alter-nate method of determining if the threat ofthe destruction of evidence warrants an excep-tion to the knock-and-announce rule. Thisalternate method is often called the “particu-larity approach.” Under this approach, policeand judges are required to determine on acase-by-case basis if a suspect is likely todestroy evidence. The particularity approach,while preferable to the blanket approach, isalso troubling in that it sets no reliable, pre-dictable standard as to when a no-knock raidis and isn’t warranted. In the absence of suchguidelines the emerging default positionseems to be substantial deference to the judg-ment of police.

To give one example, prosecutors andpolice have argued that the mere presence ofindoor plumbing at a drug suspect’s resi-dence is sufficient to satisfy the destructionof evidence exception, because drug suspectsroutinely flush evidence down the toilet oncepolice announce themselves.234 The particu-larity approach has also created a patchworkof rulings applying different standards to dif-ferent scenarios. Different jurisdictions havedetermined exigent circumstances different-ly, depending, for example, on the time of dayof the raid, whether lights are on in the home,and where informants have reported the sus-pect normally stores the drug supply. Theparticularity approach gives police no setguidelines, and instead determines the legiti-macy of an unannounced entry after the fact.

Even when no-knock warrants go horriblywrong, so long as police make a reasonableeffort to show why an entry withoutannouncement was necessary, courts havebeen reluctant to second-guess their judg-ment.

Apprehension of PerilLike the destruction of evidence excep-

tion, the “apprehension of peril” exceptionoutlined in Wilson has been interpreted invastly different ways by courts in differentjurisdictions. But there’s also a more funda-mental problem with the exception: Its logicis precisely backward. No-knock raids don’tdecrease the violence associated with servinga search warrant, they aggravate it—not justfor suspects, but for police and anyone elsewho happens to be in or around the home atthe time of a raid.

The idea that breaking into someone’shome late at night without an announce-ment might incur a violent reaction wouldseem to be intuitive. And indeed, at leastsome on the Court have recognized as much.In a widely cited dissent in the 1963 case Kerv. California, Justice William Brennan wrote:

Rigid restrictions upon unannouncedentries are essential if the FourthAmendment’s prohibition against inva-sion of the security and privacy of thehome is to have any meaning. . . . First,cases of mistaken identity are surely notnovel in the investigation of crime. Thepossibility is very real that the policemay be misinformed as to the name oraddress of a suspect, or as to othermaterial information. That possibilityis itself a good reason for holding atight rein against judicial approval ofunannounced police entries into pri-vate homes. Innocent citizens shouldnot suffer the shock, fright or embar-rassment attendant upon an unan-nounced police intrusion. Second . . .[w]e expressly recognized in Miller v.United States that compliance with thefederal notice statute “is also a safe-guard for the police themselves whomight be mistaken for prowlers and beshot down by a fearful householder.”Indeed, one of the principal objectivesof the English requirement of an-nouncement of authority and purposewas to protect the arresting officers

31

The idea thatbreaking intosomeone’s homelate at night without anannouncementmight incur a violent reactionwould seem to beintuitive.

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from being shot as trespassers, “ . . . forif no previous demand is made, how isit possible for a party to know what theobject of the person breaking open thedoor may be? He has a right to consid-er it as an aggression on his privateproperty, which he will be justified inresisting to the utmost.”235

As previously explained, police typicallyserve these warrants just before dawn, or inthe hours just before sunrise. They enter theresidence unannounced or with very littlenotice. The subjects of these raids, then, areawoken from deep sleep, and their wakingthoughts are confronted with the prospectthat their homes are being invaded. Theirfirst reaction is almost certainly alarm, fear,and a feeling of peril. Disorienting deviceslike flashbang grenades only compound theconfusion.

It isn’t difficult to see why a gun owner’sfirst instinct upon waking to a raid would beto disregard whatever the intruders may bescreaming at him and reach for a weapon todefend himself. This is particularly true ofsomeone with a history of violence orengaged in a criminal enterprise like drugdealing. But it’s also true of a law-abidinghomeowner who legally owns guns for thepurpose of defending his home and family.

The “apprehension of peril” exceptionfails, then, because no-knock raids make vio-lent confrontation and, consequently, peril,more likely than apprehending suspects withless aggressive tactics. No-knock and short-notice raids invite violence and confrontation,they don’t mitigate them. And the tacticsused in their deployment are by their verynature designed to catch victims at theirmost vulnerable, disoriented, and in a state ofmind least capable of sound judgment.

A Distinction without a Difference?If the legal landscape surrounding the

issue of no-knock warrants is murky, the cir-cumstances surrounding knock-and-announcewarrants only further complicate the picture.The knock-and-announce procedure has

become so watered-down by court decisions,and is in practice so abused and misused bypolice, there’s really become no practical dis-tinction between “no-knock” and “knock-and-announce.”

For example, if police knock and quietlyannounce themselves at 3 a.m. at a homewhere the occupants are asleep upstairs, thenbreak down the door a few seconds later, it’sdifficult to see how such a scenario is reallydifferent than a no-knock raid. There’s cer-tainly no real distinction for the peopleinside.

After a SWAT raid that led to the shootingdeath of California resident Mario Paz, BillAnkenny, assistant police chief for the townof El Monte, told the Los Angeles Times, “Wedo bang on the door and make an announce-ment—‘It’s the police’—but it kind of runstogether. If you’re sitting on the couch, itwould be difficult to get to the door beforethey knock it down.”236 More so for someoneupstairs, and/or asleep.

Given that defenders of so-called dynamicentry say the aggressive tactics are necessaryto preserve the element of surprise, it should-n’t be surprising that police aren’t offeringfull-throated notice before breaking down asuspect’s door. It’s absurd for lawmakers togive the okay to paramilitary raids on the jus-tification that the element of surprise is cru-cial to securing officer safety, but thenrequire police to knock before entering inorder to fulfill the requirements in Wilson. Onthe ground, police have done exactly whatone might expect them to do. They’ve ful-filled the letter of the announcement require-ment but preserved the element of surprise.Of course, that renders the entire reasoningbehind the announcement requirement use-less.

Like the legal mess of what defines “exi-gent circumstances,” just how much time isnecessary to legally distinguish a knock-and-announce raid from a no-knock raid alsovaries from state to state and between federalcircuits. In general, courts have found thatless than 5 seconds isn’t enough time, butmore than 10 usually is.237

32

“We do bang onthe door and

make anannouncement—‘It’s the police’—

but it kind ofruns together. Ifyou’re sitting on

the couch, itwould be difficultto get to the door

before they knockit down.”

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What is clear is that in dozens of theknock-and-announce raids gone wrongwhere police had the wrong address, occu-pants of a targeted home were rarely giventhe opportunity to answer the door beforethe SWAT team broke it down. Police typical-ly wait no more than 10 or 15 seconds, evenat times of day when the occupants of ahome are likely to be asleep. If the knock-and-announce rule is intended to give innocentpeople the chance to answer the door beforebeing subject to the violence of a forced entry,the dozens of examples where they weren’tgiven such an opportunity provide yet moreevidence that even if there’s some begrudgingrespect for the letter of the knock-and-announce rule among courts and police offi-cers, its spirit is all but dead.

As UCLA law professor Sharon Dolovichwrote in the Los Angeles Times after a raidresulting in the accidental shooting death ofan 11-year-old boy, the concern “is not thetype of warrant issued but the use of militarytactics.”238 Whether or not police officersknock and perfunctorily utter “police” beforecrashing in matters little to the people inside.

In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v.Banks, a narcotics case, that a 15–20 secondwait after knocking before making forced entrywas sufficient to satisfy Fourth Amendmentprotections against unreasonable search andseizure.239 Oddly, the Court specifically notedthat drug cases might justify a shorter waitthan warrants for other crimes, given the dis-posability of drug evidence—suggesting a blan-ket approach might be appropriate when itcomes to determining wait times. More dis-turbing, however, is the way Justice Soutercame to determine that 15–20 seconds is suffi-cient and the method of analysis he suggestsfor further jurisprudence on the matter:

On the record here, what matters is theopportunity to get rid of cocaine, whicha prudent dealer will keep near a com-mode or kitchen sink. The significantcircumstances include the arrival of thepolice during the day, when anyoneinside would probably have been up and

around, and the sufficiency of 15 to 20seconds for getting to the bathroom orthe kitchen to start flushing cocainedown the drain. That is, when circum-stances are exigent because a pushermay be near the point of putting hisdrugs beyond reach, it is imminent dispos-al, not travel time to the entrance, that governswhen the police may reasonably enter; sincethe bathroom and kitchen are usually inthe interior of a dwelling, not the fronthall, there is no reason generally to pegthe travel time to the location of thedoor, and no reliable basis for giving theproprietor of a mansion a longer waitthan the resident of a bungalow, or anapartment like Banks’s.240

Souter’s emphasis on disposal time insteadof travel time to the door is directly at oddswith the long-held common law view that thepurpose of announcement is to give inno-cents (or even the guilty) the chance to com-pose themselves and answer police beforehaving their doors broken down. As recentlyas the Richards case, for example, the Courtwrote:

The common law recognized that indi-viduals should be provided the oppor-tunity to comply with the law and toavoid the destruction of property occa-sioned by a forcible entry. These inter-ests are not inconsequential.

Additionally, when police enter a res-idence without announcing their pres-ence, the residents are not given anyopportunity to prepare themselves forsuch an entry, The State pointed out atoral argument that, in Wisconsin, mostsearch warrants are executed during thelate night and early morning hours. Thebrief interlude between announcementand entry with a warrant may be theopportunity that an individual has topull on clothes or get out of bed.241

Souter’s reasoning in Banks disregardsthese concerns. It doesn’t account for the pos-

33

Even if there’ssome begrudgingrespect for theletter of theknock-and-announce ruleamong courtsand police officers, its spiritis all but dead.

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sibility that police may target the wrong home,or give a wrongly targeted suspect the oppor-tunity to explain to police that they have thewrong address. Instead, it suggests that all tar-gets of drug raids be treated as guilty offendersand potential disposers of evidence. AfterBanks, police no longer need to consider thepossibility that the people inside aren’t guiltyand consider the time they may need to com-pose themselves. Instead, police need only cal-culate the time it might take someone in thehouse to find a sink or toilet. Thoughacknowledging that the call in Banks was “aclose one,” Souter left the door open to allow-ing for even shorter wait times betweenannouncement and entry.242 The SupremeCourt’s requirement of a police announce-ment set forth in Wilson was further eroded inthe 2006 case, Hudson v. Michigan.243 In Hudson,the Court ruled that evidence seized in a clear-ly illegal no-knock raid can still be usedagainst a defendant at trial. In removing theonly real sanction for illegally conducted no-knock raids, the suppression of evidence (suc-cessful lawsuits against police in such cases areunheard of), Hudson obliterated the alreadyweak knock-and-announce rule put forth inWilson.244 Entering without announcement isstill in theory against the law, but with nosanction for breaking it, police no longer haveany incentive to follow the law. And they haveplenty of incentive to ignore it. The long-established common law requiring announce-ment before forced entry is effectively dead.The Hudson ruling may in practice turn everydrug search warrant into a no-knock raid.

Ignoring the LawEven with the already-considerable leeway

courts have given police to obtain no-knockwarrants, many police departments still con-duct no-knock searches without even goingthrough the perfunctory motions. In addi-tion, many departments also continued toconduct no-knock raids despite the fact thatthe warrant they’ve been issued specificallycalls for them to announce or that they oper-ate in states where most no-knock raids areillegal. A few examples follow:

• In the 1997 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,raid on the home of John Hirko, policeknocked, announced their presence,broke down the door, and tossed a flash-bang grenade, “all within a few seconds,”according to trial transcripts reported inthe Allentown Morning Call.245 That’s indirect defiance of a 1992 PennsylvaniaSupreme Court decision finding a 10- to15-second pause insufficient. Police shotHirko 11 times, most of them in theback. Once the police stopped firing, aSWAT officer threw a second flashbangin Hirko’s direction, setting fire to bothHirko and his home. Hirko’s body wasburned beyond recognition.246 In a law-suit filed by Hirko’s estate against the cityand police, experts testified that the dis-orienting effects of the grenade and itsdeployment in such close proximity tothe alleged announcement, along withthe lack of clear police insignia on theblack, military-style uniforms wouldmake most anyone unable to determinewhether they were being invaded bypolice or unlawful intruders. In 2004, afederal jury found the SWAT team guiltyof violating Hirko’s civil rights.247 Thecity of Bethlehem settled with Hirko’sestate for $8 million.248 Just months ear-lier, Bethlehem police had broken downthe door of another apartment on a drugwarrant. After handcuffing a half-dressedwoman in front of her sleeping toddler,they realized they’d made a mistake.

• In 2003, a federal judge in Kansas over-turned the conviction of a drug offenderbecause police conducted a no-knockraid on his home without ever explain-ing to a court why it was necessary toenter without announcing. Kansas Citypolice testified at the time that they rou-tinely conduct no-knock raids in drugcases without specifically articulatingwhy they’re necessary, an approach thatclearly amounts to a blanket drug excep-tion to the knock-and-announce re-quirement, in defiance of Richards. Legalexperts said at the time that the magis-

34

The Hudsonruling may inpractice turn

every drug searchwarrant into a

no-knock raid.

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trate’s ruling could have affected “hun-dreds” had it been applied more broad-ly.249

• An investigation into the 1999 SWATshooting of drug suspect Troy Davisfound that police in North RichlandHills, Texas, routinely served all narcoticssearch warrants with no-knock raids,again in direct defiance of Richards.

• The Denver Post investigation into theIsmael Mena shooting found that no-knock warrants on narcotics cases inDenver were rubber-stamped by the city’sjudges in a way that amounted to the kindof blanket approach prohibited byRichards. “Along with an officer’s anony-mous source, nearly all no-knock warrantrequests over the past seven months—most of which involved narcotics cases—were approved merely on police asser-tions that a regular search could be dan-gerous for them or that the drugs theywere seeking could be destroyed,” thepaper wrote. “That violates the spirit of a1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision thatrequires specific allegations behind everyno-knock request.”250

• In the criminal trial of a woman whosays she shot at SWAT team membersbecause she thought they were criminalintruders, Muncie, Indiana, police testi-fied they typically wait only five secondsafter announcing before entering a resi-dence by force, an allotment of timedeemed too short by nearly all courts,and that effectively renders every war-rant a no-knock warrant.251

These examples were revealed only afterinvestigations into high-profile or locally publi-cized shootings and botched raids. It’s unlikelythat they’re the only places in the country wherepolice continue to defy the guidelines set out inWilson and Richards. That is particularly trou-bling given that those guidelines were rathereasy to comply with in the first place.

A System Stacked against VictimsThe prevailing legal standard states that if

a police officer reasonably believes his life tobe in peril, he’s permitted to use deadly forceto defend himself.252 Given the high-stakes,adrenalin-fueled nature of highly militarizeddrug raids, that standard allows police toshoot at suspects in such situations with vir-tual impunity, even in cases where it wasclearly an error on the government’s part thatled police to the wrong residence. Grandjuries and prosecutors have neglected topress criminal charges against police even incases where they shot unarmed victims,much less victims who were armed but justi-fiably in fear for their lives.

On the surface at least, those decisionsnot to prosecute were probably correct. Giventhe high stakes and volatile nature of drugraids, and the predicament in which they putboth officers and targets, it wouldn’t seem totake much for someone to reasonably believehis life was in danger.

The fault lies with the bad public policythat puts police officers in such unnecessari-ly perilous situations in the first place. Worse,the victims of erroneous raids are forced todetermine in their first waking moments ifthe intruders into their homes are police orsomeone there to do them harm. It’s a goodbet that some of the targets of these raids aregoing to fire back, and it’s a good bet thatpolice are going to return fire. The fault liesnot with the officers who fire out of fear fortheir lives but with the judges, prosecutors,politicians, and police officials who have lethighly militarized no-knock and short-noticeraids become so common in the first place.

To make matters worse, while courts havebeen extremely deferential to police who fireon innocent civilians, they’ve been far less for-giving of citizens—even completely innocentcitizens—who fire at police who have mistak-enly raided their homes. Victims who haveused force to defend themselves from improp-er raids have been prosecuted for criminalrecklessness, manslaughter, and murder andhave received sentences ranging from proba-tion, to life in prison, to the death penalty.

The dichotomy is troubling. Victims ofbotched paramilitary raids are expected to

35

While courtshave beenextremely deferential topolice who fireon innocent civilians, they’vebeen far less forgiving of citizens—evencompletely innocent citizens—who fireat police whohave mistakenlyraided theirhomes.

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show remarkable poise and composure, exer-cise good judgment, and hold their fire, evenas teams of armed assailants are swarmingtheir homes. Victims of paramilitary raidshave no training in how to act or what toexpect as a raid transpires. The police officerswho conduct the raids, on the other hand, areusually required to undergo at least an hourof training per month.

Yet civilians who fire back at police offi-cers who wrongly conduct forced-entry raidson their homes are frequently prosecuted,whereas police who erroneously fire at inno-cents during botched raids are almost neverdisciplined, let alone fired or charged with acrime. Civilians are expected to exhibit extra-ordinary judgment. Egregious mistakes byraiding police officers are readily forgiven.

There are accountability problems, too.Botched raids on innocent people are fre-quently dismissed as unfortunate by-prod-ucts of the War on Drugs. Unless a botchedraid generates significant media coverage, thecivilians on the other end can expect littlecompensation for their trauma. Thoughjudgments like the one in the Hirko case dooccur, they’re generally only granted in high-profile cases. Worse, they’re rarely followedup by any meaningful reform. In cases wherevictims aren’t seriously injured or killed, theyhave no legal recourse, nor are there anymechanisms put in place to follow up on theerrors to be sure they don’t happen again.Many victims aren’t even repaid for the dam-age police do to their homes.

Search warrants—even for erroneous raids—are too often sealed. This not only denies vic-tims of these raids knowledge of where the sys-tem went wrong but prevents the media andwatchdog groups from peeking into the sys-tem to make sure that, for example, judges,prosecutors, or police aren’t getting lax inensuring the reliability of the informationthey’ve collected to obtain the warrant.

Again, the New York City case of AlbertaSpruill provides a good example. Throughoutthe mid- and late-1990s, media outlets in NewYork began to report a disturbing trend in thenumber of no-knock drug warrants served on

the wrong residence. As the number of no-knock raids in New York City increased dur-ing the 1990s, authorities told victims thattheir only recourse was the city’s CivilianComplaint Review Board. But the reviewboard’s jurisdiction was so limited. Theagency was essentially powerless to give vic-tims the information they needed to seekcompensation or at least an apology and anadmission of error. The review board was onlypermitted to review cases in which policethemselves act improperly. It wasn’t allowedto look at the substance of an individual war-rant to determine, for example, if it was prop-er for a judge to have issued it in the firstplace.

As media reports throughout the mid-and late-1990s continued to highlight casesin which innocent families in New York werebeing terrorized by police donning assaultweapons and paramilitary gear, and as thesame stories were also pointing out the dis-turbing frequency with which police wererelying on tips from shady confidential infor-mants, the review board’s jurisdiction re-mained limited only to the conduct of policeafter the warrant was issued. If police fol-lowed proper procedures in conducting theraids, the review board was powerless to act.It wasn’t permitted to investigate if a raidshould ever have been conducted in the firstplace.

A 2003 Newsday article interviewed severalformer investigators on the board and foundthat many of them were frustrated, feelingpowerless to address a growing problem:

In a series of interviews, former reviewboard investigators told Newsday theagency could have done more over theyears to draw attention to the frequen-cy of wrong-door raids and the kind oferrors highlighted in the Spruill case,such as faulty tips from confidentialinformants or the failure to double-check the information before a raid.

“There were instances in which theinformation given was totally erro-neous, and the policy was the same,”

36

Unless a botchedraid generates

significant mediacoverage, the

civilians on theother end can

expect little compensation for

their trauma.

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said former review board investigatorEarl George. “It didn’t matter whetherthe information was false or inaccu-rate, we had to exonerate.” A currentreview board member who did notwant to be identified conceded thatsuch complaints were usually exonerat-ed, but added, “We can’t look behindthe warrant. . . . If the warrant said ‘noknock,’ there is no direct abuse ofauthority.”253

Supervisors also told the review board thatit lacked the authority to investigate broader,policy-related issues such as lax evidentiarystandards for warrants and the disturbingincrease in the number of botched raids.254 AsNewsday reported in a subsequent article,“One of the difficulties in the debate aboutwrong-door cases is that there are no availablestatistics on their frequency or studies analyz-ing parallels in cases.”255 In fact, Newsdayfound that many courts in the city didn’t evenkeep no-knock warrants on file after theywere issued and executed. According to thepaper, Judge Juanita Bing Newton, who over-sees New York’s criminal courts, said, “Shedoesn’t necessarily believe the court’s role inrecord-keeping is as a ‘Big Brother,’ to checkthe police and district attorney.”256

The tragedy here is that despite mediareports and concerns from review boardmembers clearly indicating a forebodingtrend, nothing was done. Then came the raidthat killed Alberta Spruill. In 2003, an errorfrom an informant caused police to conducta mistaken no-knock raid on the home of the57-year-old Spruill. The woman, who haddone nothing wrong, suffered a heart attackas police broke into her home and deployed aflashbang grenade. She died hours later.

It was a raid that included all of the ques-tionable tactics that had been raising redflags among media critics and helpless reviewboard members for nearly a decade. And itcould have been prevented.

But even after Spruill’s death, despite aflood of media coverage, a judge would con-tinue the trend of covering up the details of

paramilitary raids gone wrong. New YorkState Supreme Court judge Brenda Solofffound there was “no significant need” tounseal affidavits and the search warrant lead-ing up to the raid on Spruill’s home.257 Shecited concerns about the safety of the confi-dential informant, despite the fact that thatinformant’s “faulty tip” was why Spruill wasdead. The mention of the informant’s identi-ty also seemed disingenuous, given that themedia requests she ruled against didn’t askfor the informant’s identity, only for the sup-porting evidence that led to the warrant. Infact, Judge Soloff didn’t even bother to hearthe case from lawyers for the media petition-ers. When they showed up for oral argu-ments, they were handed the ruling, whichshe had already written.258

Despite public outcry, intense media cov-erage, and promises for reform by public offi-cials, change in New York City after theSpruill raid was slow and spare.

There were a few positive developments.The city did implement a few procedures thatincreased the amount of time it takes toobtain a drug raid warrant from 2 to 24 hours.Consequently, the total number of drug raidsdid drop, from 5,117 in 2002 to 3,577 in2003.259 Judges and police were also forced toattend training workshops on proper druginvestigation techniques and the issuance ofnarcotics warrants.260

But there’s still no oversight or trans-parency in New York. In January 2003,months before the Spruill raid, the reviewboard requested that NYPD set up a databaseto track search warrants, from applicationthrough execution. The review board recom-mended the database include the name of theprosecutor who drafted the warrant, whetherthe affidavit for the warrant was based oninformation collected from a confidentialinformant, the name of the office and unitthat obtained the warrant, the address of thepremises to be searched, evidence seized dur-ing the search, and that the database trackerrors in the entire process, including cases inwhich those errors led to searches of thewrong residence.261

37

Despite mediareports and concerns fromreview boardmembers clearlyindicating a foreboding trend,nothing wasdone.

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It wasn’t until May 2003, likely in reactionto public outrage over the death of Spruill,that NYPD finally acted on that request,announcing it would spend $24,000 toimplement the database. By July 1, 2003, thedatabase was up and running. The problemis that it’s limited to internal use. The reviewboard can access it only under limited cir-cumstances and still has no authority to lookinto why a warrant was issued in the firstplace or to scrutinize the judges and prosecu-tors who sign off on warrants. The databaseis also largely off limits to the public and themedia, even for warrants that have run theircourse.262

So despite the existence of the database,it’s still difficult for parties outside the policedepartment to monitor the way search war-rants are issued and executed in New York.It’s still impossible for the media or any out-side groups to scrutinize (a) the way prosecu-tors collect information from confidentialinformants, (b) the accuracy and thorough-ness of their applications for search warrants,or (c) the track records of judges in reviewingand approving those warrants.

Consequently, mistaken raids still happenin New York, although they do seem to be lessfrequent. On January 15, 2005, nearly two yearsafter Spruill’s death, NYPD officers conducteda botched predawn, no-knock raid on theConey Island home of Mini Matos and her twochildren. The three were pulled from their bedsearly in the morning. Matos, who is deaf andspeech-impaired and has asthma, was hand-cuffed at gunpoint in front of her children,ages eight and five. Police had the wrong apart-ment.263 Less than a year earlier, police con-ducted the aforementioned botched raid onthe home of Martin and Leona Goldberg.264

The New York example is typical. In mostjurisdictions, search warrants are sealed,accessible only by court order. As PaulRogosheske, attorney for the victim of abotched no-knock in St. Paul, Minnesota,told the alternative weekly Minneapolis CityPages in 1997: “Judges will sign anything at 3in the morning, especially when they knowthey have complete immunity. You think

that you’re safe in your house, that cops andjudges are liable for their mistakes. . . . Theyaren’t.”265

Here are some other examples of howcities have failed to reform the warrantprocess, even after high-profile tragedies andcorruption scandals:

• In 1998, after complaints about theincrease in forced-entry drug raids,Colorado state senator Jim Congrove (R),a retired undercover narcotics detective,introduced legislation that would haveput tighter regulations on the deploy-ment of SWAT teams, the issuance of no-knock warrants, and the use of no-knockraids. The bill was rejected, due in largepart to lobbying from the DistrictAttorneys Association.266 The next year aDenver SWAT team would shoot and kill45-year-old Ismael Mena in a mistakenraid.

• In 2002, the Miami Herald conducted aninvestigation into the city’s SWAT teamand the police department’s internalaffairs division. The report came after 13Miami officers were indicted on federalcharges of inventing stories and plantingevidence to justify questionable shoot-ings by the city’s SWAT team. The reportfound that that officers were permittedto stay on the city’s SWAT teams despiterepeated incidents of questionable con-duct, including incidents in which offi-cers planted guns on unarmed civiliansshot by the SWAT team. From 1994 to2001, in fact, an officer who ran theSWAT team also ran the department’sinternal affairs unit, which, according tothe paper, he filled with SWAT-friendlyofficers he could trust.267 The result: theMiami police department rarely foundwrongdoing on the part of its SWATteam, even in cases where officers werelater indicted by federal prosecutors forplanting evidence.268 By 2003, fourMiami officers had been convicted onfederal charges of corruption, plantingevidence, and cover-up. The Miami Herald

38

Matos, who is deaf and

speech-impairedand has asthma,

was handcuffed atgunpoint in front

of her children,ages eight and

five. Police hadthe wrong

apartment.

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reported more than 290 allegations ofexcessive force against the four officers,including planting drugs at the scene ofdrug raids. One federal investigator toldthe paper that shootings were never thor-oughly investigated by the department.“It’s too political,” he said. “They neverfired dirty cops.”269

• The Los Angeles Times found a similarpattern in the L.A. police department.Like New York, Los Angeles has a civil-ian review commission that investigatespolice shootings. Members are appoint-ed by the mayor. The commission wasmeant to serve as a check on internalaffairs investigations, or the conflict ofinterest problems that arise when policeofficers investigate other police officers.

But a Times investigation in October2004 found significant flaws in thereview process. “In at least 28 shootings,15 of them fatal, the commission ruledthat the use of force was justified—with-out knowing about evidence that point-ed to the opposite conclusion,” theTimes reported. “The practice of sanitiz-ing shooting reports has persistedunder successive mayors and policechiefs. It reflects an entrenched resis-tance to civilian oversight at LAPD thatdates back decades.”270

The investigation found 101 policeshootings that later resulted in juryawards or settlements to victims, amount-ing to $68.5 million in compensation,funded by Los Angeles taxpayers. In 77 ofthose cases, the civilian review commis-sion had determined the shootings to be“in policy,” meaning that officers hadacted properly. The Times detailed severalcases in which police reports described ashooting victim as armed despite evidence(never shown to the review commission)to the contrary. One former commissionpresident told the paper, “I never felt wereceived 100% of the story.”271

The Times reviewed several cases inwhich significant evidence contradict-ing the police department’s account of a

shooting was withheld from the reviewcommission. When asked to explain thediscrepancies, one assistant police chieftold the paper: “There are multiple pos-sible explanations, and they go all theway from very evil people at the depart-ment hiding facts to very poor orincompetent people. . . . The truth isprobably somewhere in the middle.”272

• In the course of a year, police in PinellasCounty, Florida, shot and killed two sus-pects in cases that generated public out-rage. In one case, a police officer shotJarrell Walker to death in front of histhree-year-old son during a paramilitarydrug raid. Walker was unarmed, thoughpolice did find a gun on the other side ofthe room. In the other case, police shot 17-year-old Marquell McCullough 14 timeswhile he was sitting in his truck. InMcCullough’s case, police later concededthey had the wrong man. In October 2005,Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats, afterpromising to take a “hard look” at policeprocedures, announced a new deadly forcepolicy for his officers. Remarkably, thenew policy actually broadened the parame-ters under which police could fire, addingsuch categories as “escapes,” and authoriz-ing the use of deadly force on people sus-pected only of misdemeanors and/or non-violent offenses.273

• After the accidental shooting death of 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda in a joint raidcarried out by federal agents and theModesto, California, SWAT team, Cali-fornia attorney general Bill Lockyer assem-bled a blue-ribbon commission to reviewprocedures, guidelines, and performanceof the state’s hundreds of SWAT teams.The Modesto Bee reported in 2001 that thecommission would look at the way SWATteams are deployed, the use of intimidat-ing clothing and equipment, and, in thewords of one commissioner, the “over-bearing-type attitudes” of SWAT teams.The panel’s co-chair, Stanislaus Countysheriff Les Weidman, remarked as thecommission proceeded that the sheer

39

The departmentrarely foundwrongdoing onthe part of itsSWAT team, evenin cases whereofficers were later indicted byfederal prosecu-tors for plantingevidence.

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number of SWAT teams across the statesurprised him. The commission alsofound that although SWAT teams are gen-erally justified, defended, and thought ofas responders to emergency situationssuch as hostage crises and terror attacks,they are most commonly used for drugsearch and arrest warrants.274

But the panel’s final recommenda-tions stopped well short of reining in thefrequent deployment of paramilitaryunits. The panel’s chief complaints werethat SWAT teams were undertrained andunderfunded, clearly implying that statesand municipalities should be directingmore funding toward SWAT teams, notless.275 The recommendations consistedlargely of standardizing procedures, defi-nitions, and guidelines, and communicat-ing better with the public. The commis-sion didn’t address the most pertinentissues, including the use of SWAT teamsto serve routine search warrants, the lackof sufficient supervision or oversight ofwarrant procedures, the problem ofbystanders and children caught in SWATraid crossfire, and the use of SWAT teamsto apprehend suspects with no history ofviolence. There were also no recommen-dations aimed at bringing more trans-parency to the informant and warrantprocesses. In fact, it’s unlikely that any ofthe panel’s recommendations would haveprevented the death of Alberto Sepulveda,the reason the panel was assembled in thefirst place.276

Recommendations

The unsettling trend of paramilitary drugraids is of course an outgrowth of the War onDrugs. Troubling as they are, these raids aremerely one small part of a wholesale assault onindividual liberty and the Bill of Rightsbrought on by America’s futile, 30-yearattempt to eradicate the drug supply. Theawful consequences of the drug war have beenrecognized even by many leading conserva-

tives, such as National Review’s William F.Buckley Jr., former secretary of state GeorgeShultz, and the Hoover Institution’s ThomasSowell. Renowned intellectuals like MiltonFriedman and Thomas Szasz have also voicedsupport for an end to the drug war, as havemainstream politicians such as former NewMexico governor Gary Johnson and formerBaltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke.277

While ending the drug war would be themost obvious and prudent recommendation,politicians don’t seem to be anywhere nearready to admit the futility of America’s druglaws.

Thus, here are some other, second-bestrecommendations for policy changes tophase out the use of paramilitary tactics fordrug policing.

Policy Changes for the FederalGovernment

End the Pentagon Giveaways. The primaryreason so many police departments acrossthe country can afford SWAT teams is thePentagon’s policy of making surplus militaryequipment available to those departmentsfor free, or at steep discounts. The Pentagonused its defense budget to buy that equip-ment, a budget given to it by Congress onbehalf of American taxpayers for the purposeof defending Americans from threats fromabroad. It’s perverse to then use that equip-ment against American citizens as part of thegovernment’s war on domestic drug offend-ers.

Set a Good Example. Some of the most egre-gious and infamous abuses of paramilitarypolice tactics have come courtesy of the feder-al government, including the infamous raid ofthe Branch Davidian compound in Waco,Texas, and the Miami, Florida, raid on thefamily of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez. Inaddition, the DEA also routinely conductsSWAT-style paramilitary raids on suspecteddrug offenders, including medical marijuanaoffenders, and professional doctors the agencyhas accused of prescribing too many prescrip-tion painkillers. Such heavy-handed tactics areespecially deplorable when they’re conducted

40

It’s unlikely thatany of the panel’s

recommendationswould have

prevented thedeath of Alberto

Sepulveda, thereason the panel

was assembled inthe first place.

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in communities that have approved marijuanafor medicinal use, or have chosen to make thetreatment of pain a higher priority than thediversion of narcotic painkillers.

Let Federalism Rule. In states and localitieswhere policymakers have put tight restrictionson the use of paramilitary police units, localpolice can merely call up the DEA, which thensends an agent or two along for the raid.278 Theinvestigation then becomes a “federal” investi-gation, governed by more lax federal policingstandards instead of more stringent local stan-dards. Congress should end this practice. DEAagents should be forced to abide by the polic-ing standards of the communities in whichthey’re conducting drug investigations.

Recommit to Posse Comitatus. The militaryis—and should be—trained only to annihilatea foreign enemy. Civilian police are trained tokeep the peace and to protect our rights whileupholding our civil liberties. The federal gov-ernment’s gradual erosion of these principlesin pursuit of fighting the drug war needs tobe halted and reversed. Congress should for-bid the military from engaging in civilianpolicing, including drug policing, and revokethe license it has granted over the years forcooperation between the military and thepolice in the sharing of training, intelligence,and technology. Elite military units should-n’t be training civilian police, and civilianpolice shouldn’t be using military tactics andweaponry on U.S. citizens.

Policy Changes for State and LocalGovernments

Return SWAT Policing to Its OriginalFunction—defusing those rare, emergency sit-uations in which a suspect presents an imme-diate threat to someone’s life or safety. SWATteams should not be executing search orarrest warrants, conducting routine policepatrols, or engaging in similarly proactivepolice work. SWAT teams should never beused to serve search warrants on drug offend-ers with no history of violence.

Rescind Asset Forfeiture Policies. Lettingpolice departments keep the assets they seizein drug raids creates perverse incentives and

leads to aggressive policing and a disregardfor civil liberties. State and local policymak-ers should remove the temptation for policeofficials or individual officers to “seek out”drug offenses for the purpose of generatingrevenue for their departments.

Pass Legislation Protecting the Right to HomeDefense. If police have invaded a home illegally,the homeowner should never be prosecuted formistaking them for intruders and lawfullydefending his property and family. Statesshould look at so-called Make My Day laws,which indemnify civilians from criminalcharges for certain conduct in defending theirhome from intruders with no legal right to bethere.279

Policy Changes for Government at AllLevels

Strict Liability. Congress and state legisla-tures should pass legislation holding thepolice agencies involved with carrying out aforced-entry drug raid strictly liable for anymistakes they make. Should police target thewrong home, wrongly shoot an innocent per-son, or wrongly injure or kill a nonviolentoffender, damages would come directly fromthe budgets of the responsible police organi-zations. Such a policy would put financialpressure on police and city officials to bal-ance drug policing priorities with civil liber-ties, and to take seriously the consequencesof the overuse of paramilitary teams. Toomany mistakes would cause taxpayers andmunicipal insurers to call for reform.

Tighten Search Warrant Standards. Searchwarrants—particularly those that lead toparamilitary raids—shouldn’t be issued onthe basis of tips from a single confidentialinformant, no matter how reliable policemight assume that informant to be. Policeshould be required to find corroboratinginformation. Police and prosecutors shouldalso be required to reveal to judges and mag-istrates—and later to defense attorneys—if aninformant has a criminal record, if a tip wasgiven in exchange for leniency in sentencingor charging, and whether or not the infor-mant was paid. Judges and magistrates

41

Elite militaryunits shouldn’tbe training civilian police,and civilianpolice shouldn’tbe using militarytactics andweaponry on U.S.citizens.

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should ask more questions and exercise morescrutiny of police and prosecutors seekingwarrants.

More Transparency. All forced raidsshould be videotaped. A video recording ofeach raid would serve to clear up any doubtsabout whether or not police knocked andannounced themselves or how long theywaited between announcement and entry.

Police departments should track warrantsfrom the time they’re applied for to the timethey’re executed, in a database that’s accessibleto civilian review boards, defense attorneys,judges, and in some cases, the media (acknowl-edging that the actual identities of confiden-tial informants need not be revealed). Botchedexecutions of warrants should be document-ed, including warrants served on the wrongaddress, warrants based on bad tips frominformants, and/or warrants that resulted inthe death or injury of an officer, a suspect, or abystander. Police departments should alsokeep running tabs of how many warrants areexecuted with no-knock entry versus knock-and-announce entry, how many required aforced entry, how many required the deploy-ment of a SWAT team or other paramilitaryunit, and how many used diversionary deviceslike flashbang grenades. Local police depart-ments that receive federal funding should alsobe required to keep records on and report inci-dents of officer shootings and use of excessiveforce to an independent federal agency such asthe National Institute for Justice or the Officeof the Inspector General.

Civilian Review Boards. In cases of shoot-ings or allegations of excessive force, civilianreview boards are a good idea and are alwayspreferable to internal police investigations.But review boards need to be given compre-hensive access to all documents related tobotched raids, including search warrants,affidavits, and information about confiden-tial informants. Review boards should be per-mitted to subpoena and question judges andprosecutors, given that both are critical par-ties to the process of obtaining warrants forparamilitary raids. In most jurisdictionstoday, prosecutors and judges are completely

free from oversight when a raid goes wrong.Review boards’ jurisdiction, therefore, shouldnot only cover the actions of police officersbut should extend to every aspect of investi-gating, procuring, issuing, and executing awarrant.

No Intimidation. Policymakers shouldmake sure that the threat of criminal chargesisn’t used against the victims of botched raidsin an effort to intimidate them from filingcivil lawsuits. Lawmakers should rescind anylaw or regulation stating that a suspect whopleads guilty of a minor charge stemmingfrom a botched raid is barred from later filinga civil lawsuit for excessive force or violationof the suspect’s civil rights.

More Accountability. Police officers arerarely, if ever, disciplined for mistakes that leadto botched raids. If a botched raid resultedfrom an officer relying on a bad informant, theinformant should be dropped, and the officershould be disciplined. Officers who misread,miscopy, or poorly communicate an address orthe location of a raid resulting in a wrong-doorraid on innocent civilians should be punishedas well. Shootings are more difficult. A botchedraid ending in a needless death—officer or civil-ian—is quite often the result of a bad policythat puts well-meaning people in volatile,unpredictable, no-win situations.

Certainly, to the extent that an officer wasshown to be careless or callous, he should bedisciplined. But to the extent that an officerfired after justifiably believing himself to bein danger, even from a citizen whose homewas wrongly raided, the blame belongs withthe officers, prosecutors, and judges whoseactions wrongly put him in that situation,not with the officer himself.

Conclusion

This paper isn’t intended to be a critiqueof police officers themselves. Rather, it’s a cri-tique of bad policies that over the last twodecades have created a military mindsetamong civilian police departments, a senseamong civilians that they’re under siege, and

42

A video recordingof each raid

would serve toclear up any

doubts aboutwhether or notpolice knockedand announced

themselves orhow long they

waited betweenannouncement

and entry.

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a litany of botched paramilitary raids thathave resulted in the needless terrorizing,injuring, and killing of innocent citizens,police officers, and nonviolent offenders. Thevast majority of police officers are well-mean-ing public servants. Unfortunately, they’vebeen led to overly militaristic policing habitsby politicians and policymakers too enam-ored with the idea of a warlike approach tofighting drugs.

Periodically over the last 25 years, a high-profile incidence of a botched drug raid end-ing in the death of an innocent person hasgiven rise to public debate and reflection onthese policies. But with just a few exceptions,any resulting reforms have been spare, incon-sequential, and localized. Meanwhile, the listof victims of botched paramilitary raids con-tinues to grow longer.

Policymakers, media outlets, and citizensacross the country should use the SupremeCourt’s unfortunate recent ruling the Hudsoncase as an opportunity to evaluate the state oftheir own local police departments. Theyshould gauge whether they’re becoming toomilitaristic in tactics and attitude. Theyshould encourage the creation of civilianreview boards and force transparency. Theyshould consider the possibility that everincreasing “get tough” drug policing has per-haps unwisely tipped the balance towardcrime fighting, to the detriment of civil liber-ties. Finally, they should put an end to thekinds of police practices outlined in thispaper, practices that 25 years of experiencehave shown that, should they continue, willinevitably end in more tragedy.

Appendix of Case Studies

Paramilitary drug raids have been growingin number for 25 years. As they’ve becomemore frequent, so too have incidents in whichthese raids have gone wrong. CriminologistPeter Kraska says his research shows thatbetween 1989 and 2001, at least 780 cases offlawed paramilitary raids reached the appel-late level, a dramatic increase over the 1980s,

where such cases were rare, or earlier, whenthey were practically nonexistent.280 Yetdespite the ongoing reporting of botchedraids in media outlets, the phenomenon is stillconsistently dismissed by supporters of para-military policing as a series of “isolated inci-dents.”

The truth is, mistaken raids continue tohappen with disturbing regularity. They can’tall be isolated incidents. This section will cat-alogue an extensive list of botched raidsbetween 1995 and April 2006 found over thecourse of several months of research. It is byno means comprehensive.

The Cato Institute has also plotted anexpanded list of cases on an interactive map,which can be found at http://www.cato.org/raidmap.

The aim of this section is to demonstratethat botched paramilitary drug raids—and thedeath, injury, and terrorizing of innocents thatcome with them—aren’t merely a regrettable,infrequent consequence of an otherwise effec-tive police tactic. Rather, they’re the inevitableconsequence of a flawed, overbearing, and un-necessary form of drug policing.

Wrong AddressThe botched drug raids that seem to gen-

erate the most public outrage are those inwhich police force entry into a home thatturns out to be the wrong address. It’s badenough to have a system in place that is need-lessly violent and provocative for known orsuspected drug offenders. But it’s particular-ly frustrating to see wholly innocent peopleterrorized, injured, and killed because police,policymakers, and judges cling to a flawedpolicy.281

No case better illustrates the preventable,tragic consequences of this flawed systemthan the death of Alberta Spruill.

Alberta Spruill. On May 16, 2003, a dozenNew York City police officers stormed anapartment building in Harlem on a no-knockwarrant. They were acting on a tip from a con-fidential informant who told them a convict-ed felon was dealing drugs and guns from thesixth floor. There was no felon. The only resi-

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With just a fewexceptions, anyreforms havebeen spare,inconsequential,and localized.

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dent in the building was Alberta Spruill,described by friends as a “devout churchgo-er.”282 Before entering, police deployed aflashbang grenade. The blinding, deafeningexplosion stunned the 57-year-old city work-er. As the officers realized their mistake andhelped Spruill to her feet, the woman slippedinto cardiac arrest. She died two hours later.

A police investigation would later findthat the drug dealer the raid team was look-ing for had been arrested days earlier and wasstill in police custody. He couldn’t possiblyhave been at Spruill’s apartment. The officerswho conducted the raid did no investigationwhatsoever to corroborate the informant’stip.283 Worse, a police source later told theNew York Daily News that the informant hadoffered police tips on several occasions, noneof which had led to an arrest. His record wasso poor, in fact, that he was due to bedropped from the city’s informant list.284

Nevertheless, police took his tip on the ex-con in Spruill’s building to the Manhattandistrict attorney’s office, which approved theapplication for a no-knock entry. A judgethen issued the warrant resulting in Spruill’sdeath. The entire process took only a matterof hours.

After the Spruill case, the media began totake notice of other victims of botched no-knocks, including the following three casesin the fall of 2002, about six months beforethe raid that killed Spruill.

• Williemae Mack. On September 3,2002, police broke down the door ofBrooklyn resident Williemae Mack in apre-dawn drug raid. Her twin 13-year-old sons were asleep at the time. One,frightened by the noise and the explo-sive device police used to gain entry, hidunder the bed. Police pulled him outand put a gun to his head. Police thenhandcuffed both boys at gunpoint.They found no drugs. They had raidedthe wrong address.285

• Robert and Marie Rogers. On October15, 2002, about 20 police armed withpistols and shotguns served a no-knock

warrant on the home of retired policeofficer Robert Rogers and his wifeMarie. The two were watching televisionwhen the officers stormed their home inQueens. Mr. Rogers initially grabbed hishandgun, believing the police to beintruders. Once he recognized they werelaw enforcement, he dropped his weap-on and covered it with his body. Rogerslater told Newsday that had the raidingofficers seen his gun, “I’d be dead.”Again, the police had the wrongaddress.286 Marie Rogers would take thenews of Alberta Spruill’s death especial-ly hard. “When I heard about what hap-pened to this woman, I broke down andcried,” Rogers later told the New YorkPost, “You would have thought that Iknew her. Then I was angry.”287

• Michael Thompson. A day before theraid on the Rogerses, police also burstinto the home of Michael Thompson,also of Queens. That raid left the man’slarge mahogany front door broken intopieces. The police then trained theirguns on Thompson’s chest while theysearched his home and the upstairsapartment of a tenant for drugs. Onceagain, they had raided the wrong ad-dress.288

The victims of the above three raids wererepresented in civil suits filed by NormanSiegel, former director of the New York CivilLiberties Union. Mr. Siegel told the New YorkTimes in the fall of 2003 that according topolice data, police were conducting about460 such searches of private residences eachmonth, with the vast majority of those servedunder no-knock warrants.289

In fact, just days after the raid on theRogerses’ home, Siegel held a press confer-ence and pled with police to end the practiceof no-knock raids. Nearly predicting theSpruill raid that would happen a year later,Siegel warned: “We must do a better job ofno-knock search warrants. Otherwise, some-one might wind up dead as a result of how weimplement this procedure.”290

44

The officers whoconducted the

raid did no investigation

whatsoever to corroborate theinformant’s tip.

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• Timothy Brockman. Just two days beforethe Spruill raid, police from NYPD andthe federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaccoand Firearms displayed extraordinaryineptitude in executing another botchedno-knock raid, this time on the home offormer Marine Timothy Brockman.Acting on a tip from a confused anony-mous informant, police stormed the pub-lic housing apartment of the 61-year-oldBrockman, who used a walker to getaround.

Police deployed a flashbang grenade,setting Brockman’s carpet on fire, thenhandcuffed the man and threw him tothe floor while they searched his homefor drugs. They had the wrong address.Brockman would later be cleared of allcharges.291

The Brockman case is another illustrationof how the mishmash of court precedentsgoverning the use of no-knock raids can leadto errors. In Brockman’s case, New Yorkpolice wanted to raid the apartment on thebasis of the testimony of a single informantwho had visited the targeted residence onjust one occasion. State law required moreevidence for a no-knock warrant. Federal law,however, is more deferential to police and, inthis case, allowed for a no-knock entry. NewYork investigators merely called the U.S.attorney for the Southern District of NewYork, who sent an agent from Alcohol,Tobacco and Firearms along for the raid. TheBrockman raid was now a federal case, gov-erned by federal guidelines.

Miscommunication between local and fed-eral police led to series of errors that caused thepolice to mistakenly break down Brockman’sdoor. Though a potentially grave and inexcus-able error on the part of federal and local police,the Brockman case was ignored by the mediaand treated with indifference by the police. Asthe Times writes, “At the time, the incidentreceived no publicity and no serious attentionfrom the police leadership.”292

In a follow-up piece published monthsafter Spruill’s death, the Village Voice reported

that complaints about police abuses withrespect to no-knocks had been pouring in foryears. “Until Spruill’s death, the NYPD haddone nothing to stem the number of inci-dents,” the Voice wrote, “despite receiving amemo from the Citizen Complaint ReviewBoard in January noting the high number ofraid complaints. Last March, the NAACP alsoapproached NYPD commissioner RaymondW. Kelly about the raids.”293

Indeed, the New York Times ran a storyback in 1998, a full five years before Spruill’sdeath, headlined, “As Number of Police RaidsIncrease, So Do Questions.”294 The papernoted that the number of narcotics searchwarrants issued in New York City doubledfrom 1,447 in 1994 to 2,977 in 1998. Most ofthese, according to the Times, were no-knockwarrants.295 The Times also profiled severalcases of botched no knocks from the late1990s. Among them were the following:

• Mary and Cornelius Jefferson. Thearticle began with a description of abotched no-knock on the home ofCornelius and Mary Jefferson, a couplein their 60s, in which police used a bat-tering ram to obliterate the front doorof an apartment “where plastic slipcov-ers protect the sofas and diplomas andawards line the walls.” Cornelius toldthe Times, “I thought they were comingto rob us, coming to kill us.” They hadthe wrong address.296

• Ellis Elliott. On February 27, 1998,police conducted a no-knock raid on theBronx home of Elliott, on the basis ofinformation they later determined to be“miscommunication with an infor-mant.” As police attempted to breakdown his door, Elliott feared he wasbeing attacked and fired a shot throughthe door. Police responded with a barrageof 26 bullets, all of which miraculouslymissed Elliott. Elliott was then draggedout of his home, naked, allegedly pep-pered with racial epithets, then arrestedon charges of possessing an unlicensedweapon. Police later admitted their error

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The Village Voicereported thatcomplaints aboutpolice abuseswith respect tono-knocks hadbeen pouring infor years.

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and paid $1,000 to have Elliott’s doorrepaired.297 Elliott pled guilty to disorder-ly conduct for firing at the officers andwas given a conditional discharge. Nopolice officers were charged or disci-plined for the error.298

• The Crown Heights Raid. On May 1,1998, police broke down the door to ahome in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neigh-borhood in a no-knock raid that wasbased on the word of a single confidentialinformant. They expected to find a drugden. Instead, according to the Times, policefound “a retired banker, a home healthattendant, and their two daughters.” Oneof the daughters was mentally disabled,and was showering at the time of the raid.Police pulled her from the shower, hand-cuffed her, and despite her pleas to theofficers that she was menstruating,refused to give her a sanitary pad until shebegan visibly bleeding.299

• Sandra Soto. On June 5, 1997, policecarried out a no-knock warrant based oninformation from an anonymous infor-mant in the East New York area ofBrooklyn. The warrant instructed themto raid a gray door marked “2M.” Findingno such door, they simply broke downthe nearest door, which was red andmarked “2L.” They found a woman,Sandra Soto, and her two children—butno drugs.300

• Shaunsia Patterson. New York Timescolumnist Bob Herbert later reported thaton the same day as the raid on Ellis Elliott’shome, New York City police raided theBronx apartment of Shaunsia Pattersonand her two children, ages three and two.Patterson was eight months pregnant.Police first grabbed Patterson’s sisterMisty, 15, who was also in the room, andthrew her to the floor. They then con-fronted Patterson, who was sitting on herbed. One officer pushed Patterson ontoher back. Another jumped on top of her.Patterson was eventually pushed to thefloor and handcuffed while, in Patterson’swords, “one of the cops stepped on the

side of my face and pressed my face intothe floor.” When Patterson asked what thepolice wanted, she says, she was told to“shut the fuck up.”

Police handcuffed Patterson whileshe wore only her underwear. Officersthen screamed expletives at the twowomen while they scoured the apart-ment for drugs—demolishing the furni-ture, kitchen, and floor in the process.The raid so frightened Patterson, sheurinated on herself. The police refusedto allow her to change. Police alsorefused to show her a warrant. Hourslater, an officer told her, “We got thewrong apartment,” and released herfrom her handcuffs. One confidentialpolice source told New York Timescolumnist Bob Herbert, referring to thePatterson and Elliott raids, “Two in oneday—that’s bad. But I’ll tell you what Ihonestly believe—I don’t think this hap-pens that often.”301

Those kinds of assurances from policeofficials are common in New York and else-where. Despite repeated media reports of“wrong door” raids throughout the late1990s, city officials continued to insist suchincidents were uncommon—and nothing tobe alarmed about. But in February 1998, theNew York Police Department circulated amemo among the city’s police officersinstructing them how to contact locksmithsand door repair services should they breakdown the door to the wrong address, sug-gesting that mistakes were in fact fairly com-mon.302

As discussed earlier, the review proceduresNew York City had in place to deal withpolice brutality failed as well. The CivilianComplaint Review Board, hamstrung bybureaucracy, limited jurisdiction, and squab-bles with the police union, was helpless toeffect any real change to stem the tide of“wrong door” warrants. New York had plentyof warnings that a case like Spruill’s mighthappen. The city’s public officials did little toheed them.

46

The review procedures NewYork City had in

place to deal withpolice brutality

failed.

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Just after Spruill’s death and ensuing mediacoverage, Manhattan Borough President C.Virginia Fields set up a hotline for victims oferroneous no-knock raids. For the first time,city officials encouraged victims of mistakenraids to come forward. The hotline receivedmore than 100 calls in its first week of opera-tion.303 Fields’s staff followed up with many ofthose calls, and her office published a reportdetailing its findings. Among the cases includ-ed in that report are the following:

• Lewis Caldwell. On March 6, 2003, sixpolice officers in riot gear broke downthe door to the home of Lewis Caldwell.Police handcuffed Caldwell, a lung can-cer patient, and forced him to the floor.Caldwell’s wife returned home fromwork to find her home filled with policeofficers and dogs. She pled with the offi-cers to release her husband from thehandcuffs. They kept him restrained formore than an hour. Caldwell says policewere “laughing and joking” while search-ing his apartment. When the Caldwellsfiled a complaint, a lieutenant called totell them the raid was justified, and“there’s nothing you can do about it.”No drugs were found, and no criminalcharges were ever filed against either ofthe Caldwells.304

• Kim Stevenson. On April 9, 2003,about 20 police officers broke down thedoor of the West Harlem home of KimStevenson, asking “where the drugswere.” They handcuffed Stevenson andtook her to another room, while otherofficers kept their weapons fixed on her12-year-old daughter. Stevenson pledwith police to explain why they were inher home, but they refused to answerher. A female officer took Stevensoninto a bathroom to do a body search.After finding no drugs on her, the offi-cers again handcuffed her while otherofficers finished searching her apart-ment. According to Stevenson, officers“made jokes and ridiculed” her duringthe search. When they left, they told her

to “have management fix her door.” Herlandlord refused. At the time the Fieldsreport was published, Stevenson’s doorhad yet to be repaired. She was nevercharged with a crime.305

• Kim Yarbrough. On May 2, 2003, policebroke into the Staten Island home ofKim Yarbrough, an employee at the city’sDepartment of Corrections. No one washome at the time, but Yarbrough’s sonwas told by his brother-in-law that “20 to30” police had raided his mother’s home.When her son came to the house to inves-tigate, he was handcuffed and thrown onthe couch. Yarbrough came home fromwork with a supervisor to see that herdoor had been broken down and herhome trashed. She and her son say policelaughed and made jokes when she askedfor names and badge numbers. NeitherYarbrough nor her son was ever chargedwith a crime.306

• Margarita Ortiz. On February 29, 2003,police broke into the home of MargaritaOrtiz. Police handcuffed the woman andher 12-year-old son for two and a halfhours while searching the apartment.After five hours of searching, police leftwithout explanation. Ortiz says that thepolice knew “within 15 minutes” that herapartment had no drugs and that theynever showed her their badges or provid-ed a search warrant. At the time of theFields report, Ortiz had been unable toget any information from the city regard-ing the raid on her home.307

• Sara Perez. On November 27, 2001,police broke into the Harlem home of.Sara Perez and put a shotgun to herhead. They held her children and grand-children at gunpoint, including one-month-old twins. Police never showedPerez a search warrant, nor did theyexplain why they were in her home.Perez later learned that the raid wasbased on faulty information supplied bya 15-year old informant. After fivemonths, the police department paid torepair her door.308

47

The hotline forvictims of erroneous no-knock raidsreceived morethan 100 calls inits first week ofoperation.

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• Jeanine Jean. On May 7, 1998, policebroke down the door and deployed aflashbang grenade in the home ofJeanine Jean. Frightened, Jean ran into acloset with her six-year-old son andcalled 911. Police pulled Jean from thecloset, handcuffed her, then questionedher at gunpoint in front of her son. Jean,who had had surgery the day before,began bleeding when her surgicalwound ruptured during the raid. After90 minutes, police realized they had thewrong apartment and left withoutexplanation. They left Jean’s door hang-ing from its hinges.309

• Atlee Swanson. On July 9, 1997, policeconducted a 6 a.m. no-knock raid at theEast Harlem home of Atlee Swanson.Police broke into Swanson’s home anddemanded to know where “Joey, Jason,and Sean” were. Swanson said she knewno one by those names. The officersrefused to show Swanson a search war-rant, handcuffed her, and told her shefaced 7 to 15 years in prison for sellingdrugs from her home. Police then puther in a holding cell for 31 hours. Shereturned home to find her apartment“trashed and vandalized.” Swanson gota copy of the search warrant in the mailthree years later. Police had mistakenlyentered the wrong apartment build-ing.310

The following raids weren’t mentioned inthe Fields report, but they also occurred atabout the same time as the Spruill raid.

• Cynthia Chapman. Chapman was inthe shower at about 6 a.m. on April 2,2003, when police broke open her doorand deployed a flashbang grenade. Thegrenade struck Chapman’s son Bobby,15, in the foot. Police found Chapman inthe bathroom, forced her to the ground,and put a gun to her head. According toChapman, one officer asked, “Where isit,” and when Chapman responded thatshe didn’t know what he was talking

about, he replied, “Don’t get smart withme or I’ll kill you.” Chapman and her sonwere handcuffed, taken to a police sta-tion, and released hours later when policediscovered they’d raided the wronghome. In 2004, Chapman settled withthe city of New York for $100,000.311

• Ana Roman. In 2004, the family of AnaRoman filed an $11 million lawsuitagainst the city of New York. The suitstemed from a September 12, 1996, no-knock raid on the home Roman, then70, shared with her husband and adultson. Police were acting on a faulty tipfrom a confidential informant thatdrugs were being dealt from Roman’shome. Roman emerged from her bed-room to find police pointing assaultweapons at her, her husband, and herson. Roman had a heart attack andspent the following two weeks in a car-diac unit. Her family maintains thatRoman never fully recovered and died ofcongestive heart failure six years later asa direct result of the attack she sufferedduring the raid.312

• Mary Bardy. Bardy went to the citycouncil hearings to give her account of aJanuary 2002 botched raid on her home.Police mistakenly believed her son wasdealing drugs. The raiding officers brokedown her door and, at gunpoint, orderedeveryone inside—including her 2-year-oldgranddaughter—to lie down.313 “I sawwhat happened to that poor woman[Spruill] and I said, this is crazy. Thiscan’t keep happening,” Bardy told theNew York Daily News.314 Bardy, who hadrecently retired after an administrativecareer with the NYPD, said she wrote“dozens of letters” and “made lots ofphone calls” after the raid on her homebut found no one who could give heranswers about the circumstances of theinvestigation leading to the night policebroke into her home. Her son was nevercharged.315

A day after the Spruill city council hear-

48

Swanson got acopy of the search

warrant in themail three yearslater. Police had

mistakenlyentered the wrong

apartment building.

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ings, Manhattan Borough President Fieldsheld hearings of her own. According to theVillage Voice:

Dozens of black and Latino victims—nurses, secretaries, and former officers—packed her chambers airing tales, onemore horrifying than the next. Mostwere unable to hold back tears as theydescribed police ransacking their homes,handcuffing children and grandparents,putting guns to their heads, and beingverbally (and often physically) abusive.In many cases, victims had received nofollow-up from the NYPD, even to fixbusted doors or other physical damage.

The Voice then echoed the Newsday report:

Some complainants reported that theyhad filed grievances with the [CitizenComplaint Review Board] and weretold there was no police misconduct.Unless there is proven abuse, the CCRBdisregards complaints about warrantsthat hold a correct address but arefaulty because of bad evidence from a[confidential informant].316

The key recommendation from the Fieldsreport was that NYPD produce an annualreport detailing “all statistics regarding theexecution of warrants.” Fields believed such areport would provide some transparency andaccountability in the issuance and executionof drug warrants, particularly those authoriz-ing no-knock raids. NYPD issued no suchreport in 2005. Less than a year after Spruill’sdeath, NYPD was back in the headlines withthe mistaken raid on Martin and LeonaGoldberg, mentioned earlier.317

Another high-profile wrong-door raidthat provoked local media and public offi-cials to take a harder look at the use of para-military drug raids was the Denver,Colorado, case of Ismael Mena.

Ismael Mena. On September 29, 1999, aDenver SWAT team executed a no-knockdrug raid on Mena’s home. Mena, a Mexican

immigrant, believed he was being robbed andconfronted the SWAT team with a gun.Police said they fired the eight shots thatkilled Mena only after Mena ignored repeat-ed warnings to drop his weapon and firstfired at them. Mena’s family says police neverannounced themselves, and that it was thepolice who fired first.318

Police later discovered they had raided thewrong home, on the basis of bad informationfrom a confidential informant.319 They foundno drugs in Mena’s house, nor were any foundin his system.320 Subsequent investigations bythe city police department’s internal affairsdivision and by a special prosecutor found nowrongdoing on the part of the SWAT team.

But weeks later, new details began toemerge about the Mena case. An aide to thespecial prosecutor, for example, said thatMena’s body had been moved at least 18inches after he was shot. A lab report thenfound that the gunshot residue found onMena’s hand didn’t match Mena’s gun butwas instead only consistent with the residuegiven off by the submachine guns the SWATteam uses. Police found no fingerprints onMena’s gun, or on the ammunition inside it,raising speculation that the gun was tam-pered with or planted.321

An internal affairs investigation clearedthe SWAT team of wrongdoing but did findthat the officer who prepared the search war-rant for Mena’s home falsified informa-tion.322 As the shooting gained traction in themedia, Denver city officials began to portrayMena as a Mexican criminal refugee wantedfor murder (Mena had shot a man in Mexicoin self-defense but had been cleared of anywrongdoing), a “blame the victim” strategyunfortunately common in police brutalitycases.323 Members of the police departmentalso later started what local media would calla “spy file” on a citizens’ organization agitat-ing for a more thorough investigation ofMena’s death. Worse, the head of the policeintelligence unit that kept a “spy file” onMena’s supporters was also the head of theSWAT team that conducted the raid onMena’s home.324

49

“Most wereunable to holdback tears as theydescribed policeransacking their homes,handcuffing children andgrandparents,putting guns totheir heads, andbeing verbally(and often physically) abusive.”

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Mena’s family eventually hired former FBIagent James Kearney to conduct a privateinvestigation. Over the course of that investiga-tion, Kearney became convinced that Denverpolice murdered Mena, then planted the gunto cover up the botched raid. Kearney foundevidence not uncovered by previous investiga-tions, including two slugs in the floor ofMena’s apartment that suggest the raid didn’thappen as SWAT officials said it did. Kearneymade his accusations on a local radio station,leading to a lawsuit against the station andKearney by members of the SWAT team. Theradio station settled. Kearney in turn filed suitagainst the SWAT team and sought to provehis allegations of a cover-up in court.325 Thesuit was thrown out in federal court, but as ofNovember 2005 Kearney was still waiting onword of his appeal.326

Mena’s family ultimately settled with thecity of Denver for $400,000.327 To its credit,the city of Denver instituted some strongreforms in response to Mena’s death. Thereforms drastically cut down on the numberof no-knock warrants carried out in the city,though reforms stopped short of an outrightprohibition on no-knock warrants for drugraids.328

Denver is the exception, however. Mosthigh-profile SWAT tragedies temporarily putreporters on the scent for similar abuses,light a fire under activists, and put policy-makers on the defensive. But that publicscrutiny is usually followed by a return tobusiness as usual.

The case that spurred the Capital Times in-depth investigation of SWAT team prolifera-tion to small-town Wisconsin stemmed froman incident in tiny Dalton, a rural town 50miles north of Madison.

Wendy and Jesus Olveda. Wendy Olveda,who was five months pregnant, her husbandJesus, and their three-year-old daughter Zenawere at home one evening in October 2000when a black-clad SWAT team broke downtheir front door and threw the couple face-first to the floor. Zena Olveda looked onfrom the couch. Jesus Olveda told the paperthat as he lifted his head to tell police they

had the wrong address, “one of them put aknee on my head and ground it into thefloor.”329

Police had the wrong address. When theyrealized their error, they rushed through theOlveda’s garage door to the home next door.The Times reported that one officer wentback to the Olveda’s home minutes later toretrieve the search warrant. The Olvedas fileda claim for compensation against the policedepartments in charge of carrying out theraid. The claim was rejected.330

Two years before the Olveda raid, police inanother small Wisconsin town mistakenlyraided the home of Daniel and Cythia Cuervo,holding the couple at gunpoint while the offi-cers ransacked their home. The Cuervos even-tually accepted a settlement in their lawsuitagainst the responsible local police agencies.The mistaken raid on their home inspired asignificant reorganization of the Multi-juris-dictional Enforcement Group narcotics unitin the Lake Winnebago area of Wisconsin.331

But the rash of media reports of botchedraids in Wisconsin in the year 2000 came afull five years after the state had already donesome introspection on paramilitary policetactics when such tactics had ended with aman’s death.

Scott Bryant. On April 17, 1995, police inDodge County, Wisconsin, forcefully enteredthe mobile home of Scott Bryant after findingtraces of marijuana in his garbage. The offi-cers would later say they knocked andannounced before entering, but neighborswho witnessed the raid say police enteredwithout doing either. Moments later, Detec-tive Robert Neuman shot an unarmed Bryantin the chest, killing him. Bryant’s eight-year-old son was asleep in the next room. Neumantold investigators he “can’t remember”pulling the trigger.332 Dodge County sheriffStephen Fitzgerald compared the shooting toa hunting accident.333

Two years later, Bryant’s family wasawarded a $950,000 settlement by DodgeCounty.334 After the Bryant case made head-lines, three victims of a similar raid by theDodge County Sheriff ’s Department also

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“One of them puta knee on my

head and groundit into the floor.”

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filed suit. According to that lawsuit, policeraided a home in Juneau, Wisconsin, afterfinding traces of marijuana and material“suspected of packing cocaine” in garbagebags outside the house. Police entered thehome “suddenly and violently” at 2:45 a.m.,threw the three occupants to the floor, andhandcuffed them. Police then searched thehouse for more than three hours. No chargeswere filed.335

After the settlement in the Bryant case, anda year after the shooting, Sheriff Fitzgeraldseemed remorseful. He told the MilwaukeeJournal-Sentinel that his own departmentwould make substantial changes to the way itconducts searches. “It’s safe to say any timethere’s a tragic accident like this that peoplewould want to do things differently,” hesaid.336 Unfortunately, that message didn’tmake it to other small towns in Wisconsin.According to the Capital Times, 18 new SWATteams have been formed across the state sincethe Bryant shooting.337

Although the case studies listed here cutoff in the mid-1990s, the epidemic ofbotched military-style drug raids goes backto the early 1980s.338 As far back as 1990, anarticle in Playboy magazine took note of acurious rise in media accounts of botcheddrug raids and published a list of more thana dozen documented “wrong door” raidsfrom the 1980s.339 In 2004, USA Today ran aneditorial citing the Spruill and Goldbergraids and calling for reform in the executionof drug warrants. But the same paper ran asimilar story more than a decade earlier, in1993 (and even earlier, in 1989), ticking off alist of botched raids and a critique of no-knock and paramilitary raids in general,including the problems with confidentialinformants, asset forfeiture, lack of oversight,and the militarization of civilian policingdescribed in this study.340 The editorial alsoincluded responses from law enforcementofficials dismissing botched raids as “isolatedincidents.”341

So not only is the problem of mistakenraids not new, neither is the cycle of mediaand public officials temporarily taking notice

of them, then neglecting to enact any realreforms. Here, in reverse chronological order,is a partial list of other documented wrong-door raids dating back to 1995:

• H. Victor Buerosse. On December 30,2005, police in Pewaukee, Wisconsin,broke into the home of 68-year-old H.Victor Buerosse in a predawn raid.Buerosse was thrown into a closet door,then to the ground, and hit in the headwith a police shield. Despite his proteststhat police had the wrong address, theydidn’t concede their mistake until asergeant arrived later. They left withoutan apology. The SWAT team eventuallyraided the correct residence, where theyfound a small amount of marijuana.Buerosse, a retired attorney, told a localreporter: “SWAT teams are not meantfor simple pot possession cases. Thepurpose of SWAT teams it to give policedepartments a specially trained unit toreact to a violent situation, not to createone. This should not happen inAmerica. To me you can’t justify carry-ing out simple, routine police work thisway.”342

• Michelle Clancy. At 5:30 a.m. onDecember 21, 2005, police in Paterson,New Jersey, stormed the home ofMichelle Clancy on a drug warrant,breaking off her doorknob. Clancy, her65-year-old father, and her 13-year-olddaughter were home at the time. Policelater confirmed they had raided thewrong apartment. Police spokesman Lt.Anthony Traina told one reporter,“These things do happen.”343

• The Baker Family. Early in the morn-ing on September 30, 2005, police inStockbridge, Georgia, conducted a no-knock raid on the home of Roy andBelinda Baker. Officers broke down thecouple’s front door with a battering ramand tossed in flashbang grenades. Thepolice held the couple at gunpoint,handcuffed them, and then sent themout onto their porch, only partially

51

The epidemic ofbotched military-style drug raidsgoes back to theearly 1980s.

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clothed. Police ruined a family Bible andantique coffee table during the raid. Theraiding officers eventually realized theintended target of their raid lived nextdoor. Police Chief Russ Abernathycalled the raid “inexcusable” and “notacceptable” and blamed poor streetlighting for the mistaken address. ButAbernathy added that no one would befired and that the raids would go on,albeit after “reviewing procedures.” TheBakers are considering a lawsuit.344

• Harold and Carolyn Smith. In Sep-tember 2005, police in Bel Aire, Kansas,raided the home of Harold Smith, thetown’s former mayor, after mistakingsunflowers in the man’s backyard formarijuana plants. Police had taken pic-tures of the plants and showed them to ajudge, who then approved the searchwarrant. Police rifled through the mayorand his wife’s belongings and tookvideotape of their home before realizingtheir mistake.345

• David Scheper. On August 18, 2005,police in Baltimore, Maryland, forcedtheir way into the home of DavidScheper and Sascha Wagner. Thinkingthey were being robbed, Wagner called911, telling the operator, “There’s some-one breaking into my house.” Scheperhad already slammed the door on theofficer, who never announced they werepolice. The police then shattered theglass on the home’s front door.

Scheper stood just inside, holdinghis 12-gauge shotgun. He didn’t haveammunition but hoped that rackingthe gun within earshot of the doorwould scare off the intruders. Whenthey wouldn’t leave, Scheper retreatedto his basement and grabbed the onlyfunctioning weapon in his house, a CZ-52 semiautomatic. As Scheper struggledto load the weapon, it accidentally dis-charged, sending a round into the floorof his basement.

Police took $1,440 in cash Schepersays he had recently withdrawn to buy a

used truck. According to the BaltimoreCity Paper, police also “hit a 70-year-oldart-deco-style metal desk with an ax.They took 18 of Scheper’s guns—mostlyinoperable antiques, he says. ‘Theythreatened to blow up my safe,’ Schepersays, so he opened it for them.”

The police were mistaken. They werelooking for a tenant Scheper had evictedweeks earlier. Nevertheless, police stillput Scheper’s antique gun collection ondisplay for the local news as part of a“roundup” of illegal weapons they’dfound in two raids. Police chargedScheper for firing the weapon in hisbasement, a charge that carried a possi-ble $1,000 fine and a year in prison.Prosecutors eventually dropped thatcharge, but only after Scheper’s lawyersuccessfully fought to get Wagner’s 911call admitted as evidence.346

• Cedelie Pompee. In August 2005, policein Newark, New Jersey, raided a homeowned by 59-year-old Cedelie Pompeewhile looking for drugs and guns.Pompee, her family, and the family towhom she rents an apartment said policecursed them while ravaging throughtheir belongings. Officials from the statepolice SWAT team and the DEA laterrealized they had raided the wrongaddress. The Associated Press reportsthat state police had made a similar mis-take four months earlier.347

• John Simpson. On June 15, 2005,Nampa, Idaho, police serving a search war-rant tossed a flashbang grenade into thehome of Vietnam veteran John Simpson.The frightened Simpson first took coverand attempted to protect his wife. He thencomposed himself, assumed he was beingattacked by intruders, and ventured outwith the only weapon he could find, thehose from his vacuum cleaner. The policehad targeted the wrong side of Simpson’sduplex. “I guess we’re going to have to seekpsychological help, I hate to say that,”Simpson told the Associated Press. “I’mnot nuts or anything, but I’m still shaking.

52

Police raided the home of the

town’s formermayor, after

mistaking sunflowers in

the man’s backyard for

marijuana plants.

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Put a shotgun next to your ear and pullthe trigger to get an idea of the noise.”Police later picked up Simpson’s neighborwith four ounces of marijuana.348

• The Chidester Family. In May 2005 inUtah County, Utah, Larry Chidesterawoke to hear explosions at the homenext to his. He went outside and sawmembers of a local SWAT team prepar-ing to raid his neighbor’s home.According to a lawsuit filed by theChidester family, one of the SWAT offi-cers spotted Larry Chidester, pointed athim, and exclaimed, “There’s one!”Chidester threw his hands in the air andrepeatedly said, “I’m not resisting.” Theofficer tackled Chidester and, accordingto Chidester, “shoved his face into theground and rocks.” Larry Chidester waslater taken to the emergency room fortreatment. Police then kicked open aside door to the Chidester home andswarmed the bedroom where LawrenceChidester—Larry’s father—was dressing.They threw him to the floor and traineda gun to the back of his head. SWATofficers later conceded they had raidedthe wrong home.

Utah County sheriff Jim Tracy lateradmitted the Chidester home wasn’t theoriginal target of the raid, but thatpolice decided to raid their home as “anancillary issue.” He said police disputedthe accuracy of the Chidesters’ accountof the raid, but wouldn’t give details.349

• Queen Moore. On October 10, 2004,police in Omaha, Nebraska, conducted anarcotics raid on the home of QueenMoore, an elderly woman. When Moorefiled suit for the damage officers did toher home, the police initially refused tobe interviewed, on advice from the policeunion. Worse, the police departmenttold Moore her complaint wasn’t validbecause union rules required it to behandwritten, not typewritten. Moore’slawyer responded that requiring her topersonally write out her complaint “isnot only illegal, but unduly burdensome

and harassing,” as Moore could barelysign her own name. Police found no con-traband in Moore’s home. She was nevercharged or arrested.350

• Teresa Guiler and James Elliott. InSeptember 2004, a SWAT team inClarksville, Tennessee, erroneously raid-ed the home of Teresa Guiler, 55, andJames Elliott, 54. Elliot, who is deaf, wasrecovering from a liver transplant at thetime of the raid. The warrant had iden-tified the wrong home. Police ChiefMark Smith said he would investigateto make sure the same mistake didn’thappen again.351

• Blair Davis. On July 27, 2004, police inHouston, Texas, broke open the door ofBlair Davis, a landscape contractor.Police screamed “Down on the Floor!Down on the Floor!” while pointing anassault weapon at Davis’s head. Davis’sfirst thought was that the invaders werecriminals dressed as police, a continuingproblem in the Houston area. A team of8–10 police officers pushed Davis to theground and handcuffed him while theysearched his home. They were acting ona tip from a confidential informant whosaid Davis was growing marijuana in hishome. The plants in question turnedout to be hibiscus plants. Police neverapologized to Davis. Dan Webb, opera-tions commander for the police teamthat conducted the raid, later said it was“unfortunate” that Davis “got caughtup in this situation,” but that “if the sit-uation came up today, we would’veprobably done the same thing.” Webbadded, “It’s not a mistaken search war-rant . . . if we believe it’s marijuana, untilwe go look at it, we’re not really going toknow for sure,” overlooking the factthat an innocent person was needlesslyterrorized due to his unit “not knowingfor sure.”352

• Donald and Amber Mundy. In Feb-ruary 2004, police in San Bernardino,California, looking for cocaine brokeopen the door to an apartment occupied

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Police were actingon a tip from aconfidentialinformant. The plants inquestion turnedout to be hibiscusplants.

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by Donald Mundy and his twin sister,Amber. When officers realized they hadraided apartment “204” instead of apart-ment “214” as specified in the warrant,they conducted a search anyway andarrested Amber Mundy on charges ofmisdemeanor marijuana possession.353

• Marion Waltman. In September 2003,an informant’s tip led police in Gulfport,Mississippi, to raid land leased by MarionWaltman. Waltman was growing kenafplants, which are commonly used fordeer food. Police raided the property andmistakenly destroyed more than 500plants, believing they were marijuana. Ajudge later ruled that the city wasn’tobligated to compensate Waltman forthe destruction of his property becausethe sheriff’s department made an “hon-est mistake.”354

• Earline Jackson. At 3 a.m. on September5, 2003, a dozen Chicago police officersused a battering ram to break down thedoor of 73-year-old widow Earline Jack-son’s apartment. “I asked them, ‘Whatdid I do?’ And they told me to get out ofthe way because they were looking fordrugs,” Jackson told the Chicago Tribune.A warrant for Jackson’s address saidpolice believed a man was using herapartment to sell drugs. Police had mis-taken Jackson’s apartment for an apart-ment one block south.355

• Francisca Perez. On August 2, 2003,police from the Bexar County, Texas,sheriff ’s department raided the home ofFrancisca Perez and her children. Theraid was based on a tip from an infor-mant that a woman named RosalindaMendez was selling cocaine from thehouse. Police handcuffed Perez and her13-year-old daughter, while her 11-year-old daughter and three-year-old sonwatched in horror as police destroyedher house looking for drugs. Theyfound nothing incriminating. Fourweeks later, police still hadn’t told Perezwhether or not she was under investiga-tion. According to the latest media

reports available, Perez, the widow of aGulf War veteran, was still attemptingto get the police to clear her name. Shetold a local newspaper that she wasreluctant to take legal action becauseher children were terrified that if shedid, the police would come back to raidtheir home again.356

• Gabrielle Wescott. On July 29, 2003,police in Montana raided the home ofGabrielle Wescott and her daughterAnnabelle Heasley. According to a 2005lawsuit, agents from the NorthwestDrug Task Force donned black hoodsand SWAT gear and raided their homeat 7:30 a.m. on a marijuana warrant.Police forced the two to the ground,handcuffed them, and according to thelawsuit, “mistreated, threatened, cursedat, and terrorized” them, while police“ransacked the house” and “cut piecesof drywall out of the basement.” Thecomplaint alleges that the police affi-davit leading to the search warrant“contains half-truths and inaccuraciesand clearly was not completed in goodfaith,” and that police never identifiedthemselves. The women were nevercharged.357

• The Phoenix Hell’s Angels. In July 2003,police in Phoenix, Arizona, conducted apre-dawn drug raid on a Hell’s Angelsclub. Police knocked, then waited just sixseconds before deploying a flashbanggrenade and forcing their way into theclubhouse. Michael Wayne Coffelt, whowas asleep at the time, awoke to thegrenade and quickly armed himself with apistol. When Coffelt, who thought theclubhouse was being robbed, approachedthe door, Officer Laura Beeler shot andwounded him. Beeler claims Coffelt firedat her, though a ballistics test later con-firmed that Coffelt never discharged hisgun. Police did not find any drugs in theclubhouse. Prosecutors later broughtcharges against Coffelt for assaulting apolice officer. In dismissing the charges,Maricopa Superior Court judge Michael

54

Police handcuffedPerez and her

13-year-olddaughter, whileher 11-year-old

daughter andthree-year-old sonwatched in horror

as policedestroyed her

house looking fordrugs. They

found nothing.

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Wilkinson described the raid as an“attack” in violation of the FourthAmendment, and said Coffelt’s actionswere “reasonable behavior, given the hourand the fact that the house was underattack.” Wilkinson also determined thatBeeler’s mistaken belief that Coffelt hadfired at her was also understandable,given the volatility of such a raid and thatthe officer may have misinterpreted theflashbang grenade for a gunshot.358

• The Holguin Family. According to courtdocuments filed in conjunction with a law-suit, the Holguin family of Albuquerque,New Mexico, say police blew their door offits hinges, deployed flashbang grenades,then stormed their home on June 5, 2003.Carmen Holguin, 80, required medicaltreatment for injuries she sustained duringthe raid. The lawsuit also alleges that JuliaHolguin, 55, was injured when an officerstepped on her back, and that police kickedan unnamed 14-year-old girl while execut-ing the warrant. None of the four werecharged, and police seized nothing fromthe home. A paralegal for the family’slawyer told the Associated Press that policehad made a controlled cocaine buy on thestreet where the Holguins lived and indi-cated they may have mistaken the family’shome for the place they had bought thedrugs.359

• Sandy Cohen. In 2002, police inPhiladelphia raided the home of 85-year-old Sandy Cohen as she was takinga shower. Cohen got to her door just aspolice were blowing it off its hinges.When she protested to police that theyhad raided the wrong home, onereplied, “That’s what they all say.” Policelater conceded they’d made a mistake.Cohen’s neighbors had told the raidingofficers they were making a mistakewhile they were planting the explosivesoutside her door.360

• The Huerta Family. On November 20,2002, a San Antonio, Texas, SWAT teamdeployed tear gas canisters, shattered aglass door with bullets, then stormed an

apartment occupied by three Hispanicmen. “We were kicked and punched atleast 20 times. I couldn’t talk. I was goodand scared,” Salvador Huerta told theSan Antonio News-Express. His cousinMarcos Huerta was taken to the hospitalwith a cut face and bruised head. VincentHuerta added, “The way they entered, Inever thought it could be police.” Allthree thought the raid was a robbery.Police had the wrong address.361 Policelater blamed the mistake on darkness,and “a cluster of look-alike buildings,”despite the fact that officers stated on thewarrant that they had conducted surveil-lance on the suspected residence for twodays.362

• Irene Gilliam Hensley. On August 14,2002, police in La Porte, Texas, stormedthe home of 88-year-old Irene GilliamHensley on a paramilitary raid after a tipthat her grandson Charles Gilliam wasgrowing marijuana in her backyard. Thetip came from an aunt who had had anargument with Gilliam, and policedecided to raid after an officer peekedover Hensley’s fence and confirmed thepresence of marijuana. According to theHouston Chronicle, the warrant specifical-ly stated that the officer who peekedover the fence had experience identify-ing marijuana plants. The plants turnedout to be okra. Police found no drugs inthe home.363

• The Gilbertson Family. In February2002, a SWAT team in Denver’s Highlandneighborhood shattered a window inanticipation of a raid. Upon lookinginside, they discovered they had brokeninto the wrong townhouse. They werepreparing to deploy a flashbang grenadein the home, occupied by Erik Gilbertsonand his pregnant wife. The couple was atthe opera at the time of the raid. A policespokesman called the raid an “under-standable mistake.”364

• Maria Flores. In May 2001, police inAustin, Texas, raided the home of MariaFlores, a grandmother. A flashbang

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“We were kickedand punched atleast 20 times. I couldn’t talk. I was good andscared.”

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grenade shattered her window, and theSWAT team entered behind by kickingin her door. Police shoved Flores to theground, bound her, and held her at gun-point while they tore apart her home ina search for cocaine. They had mistakenher house for the house next door.Flores was taken to the hospital withinternal bruising. “For about 20 min-utes, I was on the floor crying, wonder-ing ‘What’s going on?’” Flores told theAustin American Statesman. “I’m just gladmy grandkids weren’t here.” Six monthsafter the raid, police acknowledged theraid was a “terrible mistake.” AssistantPolice Chief Jim Fealy said, “We violatedthat woman’s privacy and needlessly [sic]by mistake.” He attributed the error to“sloppy police work.”365

• Estelle Newcomb. In October 2001, adrug task force in Middlesex, Virginia,broke down the door of 50-year-oldEstelle Newcomb and her 80-year-oldaunt. Police had targeted the wronghome after miscommunicating with aninformant. The investigating officertold the Associated Press: “I knew thiswas not right. To be honest with you, itwas sloppy police work—not being thor-ough enough.” The previous July, thesame task force, along with the NationalGuard and state police, conducted araid on a suspect they thought wasgrowing marijuana. The plants turnedout to be tomatoes.366

• Charles and Debora Alexander. OnAugust 17, 2001, police in Waco, Texas,served a drug warrant on the home ofDebora and Charles Alexander. Accordingto the Waco Tribune-Herald, police chargedthe residence with guns drawn, yelling“Police, search warrant!” before realizingthey had entered the wrong apartment.The Alexanders’ visiting nine-year-oldgrandson, who has Down’s Syndrome,went into a seizure. Debora Alexanderfainted. Charles Alexander says that uponrealizing their mistake, police left withoutapologizing, or offering to help either

Debora or the grandson. Just secondsbefore the raid, Debora had been unpack-ing boxes, one of which contained her hus-band’s gun. Charles told the Tribune-Herald, “God only knows what would havehappened if they would have walked downthat hall with her holding that gun.”Remarkably, on August 20—three daysafter the raid—Lieutenant Gary McCullytold the paper he wasn’t aware that hisown officers had entered the wrong apart-ment until a reporter had called and toldhim.367

• Sandra Smith. In May 2001, a TravisCounty, Texas, SWAT team conducted araid on the home of Sandra Smith forsuspicion of growing marijuana. Afterdeparting from a helicopter, stormingSmith’s home, kicking her dog, ransack-ing her belongings, and holding her andthree visitors at gunpoint, police discov-ered the plants were ragweed. “This isthe most terrifying thing that’s everhappened to me in my life,” Smith said.“I’ve never been in trouble with the law.”Smith filed a lawsuit against the city fordamage to her home. At the time thesuit was filed in 2002, her name was inthe department’s database as a narcoticsoffender. Travis County settled withSmith and her visitors for $40,000. TheTravis County SWAT team was later dis-solved after a series of questionableraids.368

• Henry and Denise McKnight. OnFebruary 27, 2001, at about 10:30 p.m.,police in Topeka, Kansas, kicked openthe front door, detonated a flashbanggrenade, and held Henry and DeniseMcKnight and their seven children atgunpoint on a drug warrant. They hadmistaken the McKnight’s home for thehome next door. The McKnights’ subse-quent lawsuit alleged that police ques-tioned them at gunpoint and continuedto search the home even after realizingthey’d made a mistake. Police Chief EdKlumpp acknowledged the mistake andsaid that the police department would

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The plants turned out to be

tomatoes.

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make “minor adjustments” to its proce-dures, though he wouldn’t say whatthose adjustments would be “because itwould jeopardize the safety of our offi-cers.” The Topeka City Council eventual-ly settled with the family for $95,000.369

• Susan Wilson. On February 15, 2001, aSWAT team dressed in full-assault attirestormed the home of Muskego, Wiscon-sin, resident Susan Wilson, 49. Wilson wasstanding in her driveway with her dogwhen the Waukesha County Metro DrugEnforcement Group apprehended her.Police forced her face down on her snow-covered drive, handcuffed her, and heldher at gunpoint while police searched herhome. They had the wrong address.370

• Sandra Hillman. On January 19, 2001,police from Russellville and FranklinCounty, Alabama, raided the home ofSandra Hillman and her daughter Mar-quita. Agents with a no-knock warrantkicked down the door to Hillman’sapartment and held the two womenhandcuffed and at gunpoint while con-ducting their search. Police never identi-fied themselves. Hillman made two sub-sequent trips to an emergency room forheart problems related to the raid.Police had the wrong address.371

• John Adams. On October 4, 2000, atabout 10 p.m., police in Lebanon,Tennessee, raided the home of 64-year-oldJohn Adams on a drug warrant. In whatLebanon police chief Billy Weeks wouldlater say was a “severe, costly mistake,”police had identified the wrong house.According to Adams’s wife, police wouldnot identify themselves after knocking onthe couple’s door. After she refused to letthem in, they broke down the door andhandcuffed her. Adams met the police inanother room with a sawed-off shotgun.Police opened fire and shot Adams dead.One officer was fired after the incident,and several others were suspended, but nocriminal charges were filed.372 Adams’swidow eventually won a $400,000 settle-ment from the city.373

• Daniel and Rosa Unis. In 2000, federalagents in Pueblo, Colorado, stormed thehome of Daniel and Rosa Unis after sus-pecting their sons of cocaine distribu-tion. With no warrant, police in black skimasks broke into the Unis home at gun-point and arrested Marcos and DavidUnis. The two were kept in custody fortwo days but were never charged. Whenthe Unis family filed a federal lawsuit in2005, the lawyer for the agent in chargeof the raid conceded that the raid was ille-gal. One officer described the incident as“unfortunate” and said “miscommunica-tion” led to the wrongful raid, arrests,and detainments.374

• William and Geneva Summers. OnMay 22, 2000, police in Pulaski, Virginia,conducted a 4 a.m. raid on the home ofWilliam and Geneva Summers. TheSWAT team broke through the couple’sback door, woke them, and held them atgunpoint. Police had the wrong address.They had raided the home on the basis ofa tip from a “reliable” informant thatthere was a methamphetamine lab in-side. Magistrate Judge Jill Long conclud-ed that police assertions that the infor-mant was “reliable” were sufficient toestablish probable cause for a pre-dawn,forced-entry search. The informant lateradmitted he had lied.375

• Brandon and Richelle Savage. On April6, 2000, police in Chicago raided theapartment of Brandon and RichelleSavage on bad information from aninformant. Police broke down the doorand ordered the couple out of bed at gun-point before realizing their mistake.Police officials then ignored the Savages’request to pay for damage done to theirapartment until a columnist reportedthe incident in the Chicago Sun-Times.376

• Dovie Walker. On December 4, 1999,police in El Dorado, Arkansas, conduct-ed a drug raid on the home of DovieWalker. Officers tore the woman’s frontdoor from its hinges with a batteringram, damaged another door to her bed-

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One officer wasfired after theincident, and several otherswere suspended,but no criminalcharges werefiled. Adams’swidow eventuallywon a $400,000settlement fromthe city.

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room, broke a latch on a third door,overturned and broke Walker’s furni-ture, and generally “demolished” herhouse. Police officers had handcuffedWalker’s three children at gunpointbefore realizing they had mistaken herhouse for the one next door. Walker wasalso babysitting children of ages one,two, and three at the time of the raid.When a police department spokesmantold a local newspaper police had nointention of paying for the damage theydid to Walker’s home, El Dorado’smayor promised four days later to beginwork on the damage to Walker’s house“as soon as possible.”377

• The Tyson Family. On October 20,1999, police from the DEA, the FBI, andConnecticut Department of PublicSafety conducted 30 drug raids at loca-tions around the Hartford area. One ofthose raids was on the home of 59-year-old Emma Tyson, her daughter-in-law,and her 13-year-old grandson. Twelvepolice officers broke into Tyson’s home,causing her to have an asthma attack.Police were looking for a suspected drugdealer who had moved out of the homefour months earlier, when Tyson boughtit. Tyson filed a lawsuit two years later,when federal and local police authoritieshad yet to apologize or make an effort toclear her name.378

• Mario Paz. On August 9, 1999, 20police officers from the El Monte,California, SWAT team conducted alate-night raid on the home of 65-year-old Mario Paz. By the end of the raid,Paz had been fatally shot in the back bypolice. The police version of eventschanged several times from the night ofthe raid. Police first said Paz was armed.They next said he wasn’t armed but wasreaching for a gun. Their final accountwas that Paz was reaching not for a gunbut to open a drawer where a gun waslocated.

Paz was unarmed when he was shot.Police later revealed that they had con-

ducted the raid after finding the Pazaddress on the driver’s license, vehicleregistration, and an old cell phone bill ofsuspected drug dealer Marcos BeltranLizarraga (charges against Lizarraga weresubsequently dropped, in part becausethe videotape that was supposed to con-tain a recording of the search of his hometurned up blank).379 As mentioned earli-er, one El Monte police official wouldlater say that anticipated “proceeds”from the Paz family in asset forfeiturealso played a part in the raid.

The Paz family explained thatLizarraga had lived next to them in the1980s and had convinced Mario Paz tolet him receive mail at their residenceafter he moved. Three weeks after theraid, the El Monte Police Departmentannounced that they had no evidencethat anyone in the Paz family wasinvolved in any illicit drug activity, nordid the SWAT team have any reason tothink so on the night Paz was shot.380

During the raid, police seized morethan $10,000 in cash and announcedplans to claim the money for themselvesvia asset forfeiture laws. Police backed offthose plans when the Paz family provedthe money to be their life savings.

Shortly after the Paz shooting madeheadlines, El Monte police conductedanother raid on the home of an immi-grant family. Police confronted RosaFelix on September 22, 1999, afterbreaking into her home. According to alawsuit Felix would later file, the officerstold her that they knew her family wastrafficking drugs, that they had infor-mation that she knew Paz, and thatunless she gave them incriminatinginformation about Paz, they wouldhandcuff her, arrest her, and take awayher children. Felix refused, insisting thather only interaction with Paz was frombuying used cars from him. Chargeswere never filed against Felix.381

In October 2001, the officer who shotPaz was exonerated in investigations by

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By the end of theraid, Paz had

been fatally shotin the back by

police.

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both the Department of Justice and theLAPD. A county prosecutor insisted thatOfficer George Hopkins “acted lawfullyin self-defense” during the raid.382

El Monte’s police department wasknown to be highly militaristic—butalso effective. The town’s police depart-ment boasted an assault vehicle withgun turret dubbed the “peacekeeper,” aswell as a helicopter. In 1992—five yearsbefore the Paz shooting—a federalappeals court had found “Chief WayneClayton, as a policymaker, acquiesced ina custom of complacency, if not hostili-ty, toward allegations of misconduct bythe department’s officers.” One mayorwho tried to clean up the police depart-ment was voted out of office with helpfrom the town’s police union. “They runcity hall. Nobody has control over thepolice,” former El Monte mayor PatWallach told the Los Angeles Times. “Theycan do as they damn well please. Theyhave a helicopter, a tank. They havecarte blanche.”383

In 2002, the city of El Monte settledwith the Paz family for $3 million. Thecity also agreed to 13 conditions putforth by the family, mostly reforms in theway it carries out search warrants anddeploys its SWAT team. Even in agreeingto the settlement, however, many cityofficials insisted the police did nothingwrong. “We don’t view it as whether wewere liable for his death,” said city attor-ney Clarke Moseley. “We believe the fam-ily was involved [in narcotics trafficking]to some extent.” No member of the Pazfamily was ever charged with a crime.384

• Ralph Garrison. On December 16, 1996,a SWAT team wearing black balaclavasraided a rental property owned by 69-year-old Ralph Garrison. Police were acting ona tip that the property contained equip-ment being used by methamphetamineaddicts to print counterfeit checks andcurrency. Police conducted the 6 a.m. raidwith the aid of a helicopter from U.S.Customs and two K-9 units. As the raid

commenced, Garrison confronted thepolice and asked why they were on hisproperty. Raiding officers claim they toldGarrison they were police executing a war-rant. Just how clear they were is in dispute.Garrison immediately returned to hishome to call 911. He asked the dispatcherto send police, because vandals with “axesand all kinds of stuff” were breaking intohis rental property. Garrison later told thedispatcher, “I’ve got my gun. I’ll shoot theson of a bitch.” According to raiding offi-cers, Garrison then emerged from hishouse with a gun, whereupon three offi-cers opened fire on him with AR-15assault rifles, killing him. Police hand-cuffed Garrison after shooting him, thensearched his home. They also shot his dog,a 14-year-old chow, and handcuffed hiswife, 69-year-old Molly Garrison, who saidpolice didn’t remove their hoods or identi-fy themselves until after the raid. Policemade no arrests.

One of the officers involved in theGarrison raid, Howard Neal Terry, hadbeen subject to three federal excessive-force lawsuits in the previous six years,causing the city of Albuquerque to pay atotal of $375,000 in settlements.

In 1999, a federal court dismissed theGarrison estate’s lawsuit against thepolice department, holding that the offi-cers had “qualified immunity,” whichprotects them from civil damages in anylawsuit where it is determined that policedid not clearly violate any establishedconstitutional protections.385

• Catherine Capps and James Cates. InMay 1999, police stormed the Durham,North Carolina, home of 73-year-oldCatherine Capps. Also in the house atthe time was Capps’s friend, 71-year-oldJames Cates. Police say they obtained awarrant for the home after a confiden-tial informant bought crack cocainethere. Capps had poor vision, was deaf,and according to her family, “could noteven cook an egg without being extreme-ly out of breath.” When police raided the

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“They can do asthey damn wellplease. They havea helicopter, atank. They havecarte blanche.”

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home, they ordered Cates to stand.Hobbled by a war wound and fright-ened, Cates stumbled at the order andfell into a police officer. Sgt. L. C. Smithapparently mistook Cates’s stumble as alunge for the officer’s pistol. Smithresponded by punching the elderly mantwice in the face.

Cates, 79, wasn’t permitted to use thebathroom during the search, causinghim to urinate on himself. Both Catesand Capps were also strip-searched. Nodrugs were found in the home or onCapps’s or Cates’s person.386

Capps later died from health maladiesher family says she incurred during theraid. She was never charged with sellingcrack cocaine to the informant because,according to prosecutors, trying herwould have required them to release theinformant’s name.387 Subsequent investi-gations conducted by the Durham PoliceDepartment, the FBI, and the local dis-trict attorney found no wrongdoing onthe part of police.388

About six months prior to the Capps-Cates raid, the city of Durham had set upa citizens’ review board, in part due tocommunity complaints about other alle-gations of excessive force on the part ofpolice. But like similar review boards inother parts of the country, proceedingswere often conducted in secret, com-plainants weren’t given access to witness-es or evidence, and laws regarding searchwarrants kept vital information sealed.When Capps’s family attempted to file acomplaint with the review board, theboard instituted a new rule denying ahearing to any complainant who hadpreviously sought financial compensa-tion from the city, and applied the ruleretroactively. Though neither Capps norher family had asked for compensation,Cates had, giving the review board causeto refuse to even listen to a complaintabout the raid.389

• Tina and Margie Peterson. On April 4,1999, police conducted a drug raid on a

home in Kaysville, Utah, four days afterobtaining the warrant and three weeksafter obtaining the information to getthe warrant. Despite the fact that a mov-ing van sat in front of the apartment theofficers carried on with the raid. Theyburst in on Tina and Margie Peterson,two sisters who were just moving intothe apartment. Police charged in withguns drawn, and ordered the sisters andtheir two guests to the floor. Accordingto the Petersons, officers continued todetain and question them even afterthey showed identification and proofthat they were new tenants. The sistersfiled suit against the police departmentin 2004.390

• Edwin and Catherine Bernhardt. OnFebruary 9, 1999, police in Hallandale,Florida, conducted a late-night raid on thehome of Catherine and Edwin Bernhardt.Edwin, whose job requires him to get up at4 a.m., was asleep. Catherine was on thecouch. Police busted open the Bernhardt’swindow and jammed an assault rifleinside. Edwin Bernhardt woke up and randownstairs in the nude. Police pushedCatherine to the floor and handcuffed herat gunpoint. They then subdued, hand-cuffed, and forced Edwin Bernhardt downinto a chair, while a police officer outfittedhim with a pair of his wife’s underwear. Hewas arrested and spent several hours in jail,still clad only in the underwear, untilpolice realized their mistake and drovehim home.

When the couple later filed suit, thecity of Hallandale fought back. City attor-ney Richard Kane told the Miami Heraldthat citizens should expect such tactics asthe price of the drug war. “They made amistake. There’s no one to blame for amistake,” Kane said. “The way these peo-ple were treated has to be judged in thecontext of a war.” When asked to com-ment on the suit, Fort Lauderdale policecaptain Tom Tiderington said: ‘‘There’sno perfect formula for success. It couldhappen at any time.’’ The Herald reported

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Cates, 79, wasn’tpermitted to use

the bathroomduring the search,

causing him tourinate on

himself.

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recent similar “wrong door” raids inSeminole County (twice), Largo, andTampa.391

A year later, police in Hallandalemade another botched raid, stormingthe home of a pregnant woman and herthree young children. Police insistedthey had the correct house, based on atip from an informant who said he’dbought drugs there. They didn’t findany drugs. The woman whose home wasraided, Tracy Bell, had complained topolice about drug activity in the neigh-borhood and says police had confusedher home with the one next door. Bell’sneighbor, who had a criminal record,admitted to having friends involved indrug distribution. Bell had no record.

Hallandale police insisted that thistime, unlike with the Bernhardt raid,they had the correct address. Bell’sattorney noted that police seem to havemade the same mistakes, and offeredthe same excuse, for this raid as they hadwith the Bernhardt raid. Attorney GaryKollin told the Miami Herald, “It appearsthat they continue to use informants astheir scapegoats when they mess up andthen they hide behind the confidentiali-ty of the informants to avoid a properinvestigation into who is telling thetruth.”392

• Earl Richardson. In June 1998, policein Raleigh, North Carolina, broke downthe door of 66-year-old Earl Richardsonin a mistaken drug raid. Police orderedRichardson to the floor while they rum-maged through his belongings. Theyhad meant to raid an unmarked apart-ment to the rear of Richardson’s home.After an apology from Raleigh mayorTom Fetzer, Richardson said: “I don’thave anything against the city. I’m justglad I didn’t get shot.”393 Five monthslater, Raleigh police would conductanother botched raid at the home ofPriscilla Clark. “I looked out my bed-room door and saw this big gun comingdown the hall and a man dressed in

black,” said Clark, who was pregnant atthe time. Police locked Clark and her twochildren in a bedroom for more thanhour before realizing they’d raided thewrong home.394

• LaDana Ford. In March 1998, statetroopers and local police in Harvey,Illinois, deployed a flashbang grenadethen initiated a no-knock raid on thehome of LaDana Ford. Police hand-cuffed Ford’s 13-year-old and questionedher 7-year-old, while keeping the entirefamily at gunpoint. They later realizedthey’d raided the wrong address. Harveypolice chief Phil Hardiman was unapolo-getic. “We make out search warrantswhen we get information from druginformants,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Sometimes they give us incorrectinformation, and warrants are made outfor one house when we’re really lookingfor the house next door. I think that’swhat happened here. That happens fromtime to time in any police department.”When asked if the department wouldapologize, Hardiman replied: “I don’tknow if we’d apologize. It’s not unusualfor that to happen sometimes, but I willsay it doesn’t happen that often.”395

• The Fulton Family. On March 18, 1998,police raided the Bronx apartment of agrandmother, her daughter, and her six-year-old grandson. The Fulton familywas watching television when policepounded on the door, then broke it openand began tearing through the apart-ment looking for drugs. They had thewrong apartment.396

• Jennifer Switalski and Tenants. OnFebruary 2, 1998, police in Milwaukeeconducted a 6:30 a.m. raid on a buildingowned by Jennifer Switalski. Switalskiwasn’t home at the time, but her two ten-ants were. After breaking down the door,police handcuffed the two tenants whilea terrified two-year-old girl looked on.Police had the wrong address. Switalksilater tried to sue the city for emotionaldistress and loss of income after her

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A year later,police inHallandale madeanother botchedraid, stormingthe home of apregnant womanand her threeyoung children.

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frightened tenants moved out. City offi-cials balked. “If it happened to me, Iwould be upset, too,” said city attorneyLouis Elder. “But the taxpayer should nothave to pay for hurt feelings becausethose deputies inadvertently entered thewrong home.” Elder also said Switalskiwas filled with “grandiose ideas” forattempting to sue the city, though sheherself hadn’t witnessed the raid.397

• The Baines Family. On November 8,1997, police in Suffolk County, NewYork, received a tip from a drug suspectthat residents of a home in Wyandanchwere stashing “ a black automatic pistol,two machine guns, a stainless steelsawed-off shotgun, ammunition, bullet-proof vests, crack cocaine, proceedsfrom drugs sales and drug parapherna-lia.” Within hours of the tip, and withno corroborating investigation, a judgeissued a no-knock warrant and policeexecuted a raid on the address given bythe informant. The address turned outto be the home of Denise Baines and hertwo sons. Baines’s 10-year-old son’s bed-room was trashed in the raid. Policeapologized to the Baineses upon realiz-ing they’d raided the wrong home butdefended the practice of executingquick, no-knock raids based on the tipof a single informant, even one whohimself was a drug suspect.398

• June Nixon. On August 19, 1997, policein Kaufman County, Texas, kicked downthe door to the home of June Nixon, herdaughter Melissa Cheek, and her grand-daughter. Police handcuffed the womenand strip-searched them at gunpointbefore realizing they’d raided the wronghouse. The same sheriff’s department wasforced to apologize to two families in 1989for mistaken drug raids that, according tothe Dallas Morning News, “turned up nodrugs, but left houses damaged and fami-ly members shaken.”399

• Salt Lake Tortilla Factory Raid. In1997, police in Salt Lake City, Utah,raided a tortilla factory and restaurant

owned by Rafael Gomez, a naturalizedcitizen. Seventy-five heavily armedpolice officers stormed the business ona tip from a confidential informant.Expecting to find heroin and cocaine,they found only two 24-pill packs of thepainkiller Darvon and two bottles ofpenicillin. Gomez says he was struck inthe face and knocked to the floor, andthat police trained a gun on his six-year-old son. One secretary says she wasdragged to the floor by her hair. Policehandcuffed 80 people, mostly Hispanic,in the raid and forced them to lie downfor up to three hours as police searchedthe premises. Gomez spent a large sumof money fighting charges resultingfrom the raid, which were later dis-missed. Bad publicity from the raid andthe length of time it took to clear hisname killed Gomez’s business anddashed his hopes of opening a largeshopping center in the area. He settledwith the city of Salt Lake in 2004 for$290,000.400

• The Tarkus Dillard Family. In June1996, police raided the Pontoon Beach,Illinois, home of Tarkus Dillard, VickieBlakely, and the couple’s two young chil-dren. According to Dillard and Blakely,one officer pointed a gun directly in theface of their three-year-old daughter.Police had mistakenly raided their homeinstead of the home next door. PoliceChief Michael Crouch apologized toDillard and Blakely but insisted policehad done nothing wrong. A federal judgethrew out a $1 million lawsuit againstthe police department in 1998. A lawyerfor the police officers called the suit’s dis-missal a “tremendous vindication” of theofficers’ actions and said he was contem-plating suing Dillard and Blakely, torecoup the city’s legal costs.401

• Jeffrey and Phyllis Hampton. In May1995, police in Concord, North Carolina,mistakenly stormed the home of Jeffreyand Phyllis Hampton. The Hamptonswere relaxing at around 9:30 p.m. when

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“The taxpayershould not have

to pay for hurtfeelings because

those deputiesinadvertently

entered the wrong home.”

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police broke down the Hamptons’ door,came into the house with assault weap-ons, and ordered the couple to the floor.Police realized their mistake after about ahalf hour of interrogation.402

Three years later, Concord policewould wrongly raid another home, thatof Leonard Mackin, Charlene Howie,and their four children. Police burst intothat home with guns drawn on thenight of May 22, 1998, and ordered thefamily to the floor. After repeated pleasby Mackin to police that they had thewrong house, Detective Larry Welch rec-ognized Mackin as a co-worker with thecity and asked, “Leonard, is that you?” Aconfidential informant had given policethe wrong address.403

In 1999, police in the same town shot15-year-old Thomas Edwards Jr. in theback while he was on his hands andknees under orders from another policeparamilitary unit on a drug raid.Edwards and five other children, allaged 13–17, were at the house playingvideo games when police conducted theraid. Officer Lennie Rivera shotEdwards just below the hip when,according to an internal police investi-gation, “a sudden movement jolted hisgun, causing him to tighten his grip onit and pull the trigger.” Police found asmall amount of marijuana and cocaineat the home. Police Chief Robert E.Cansler said that his officers had donesurveillance on the home an hour ortwo prior to the raid and that “at thattime there were no indications of agroup of children present.” OfficerRivera was found to have improperlyheld his finger on the gun’s trigger andwas assigned to more training.404

• Richard Brown. On March 12, 1996, act-ing on a tip from an informant, a MiamiSWAT team fired 122 rounds into thehome of 73-year-old Richard Brown,while his 14 year-old great-granddaughterfeared for her life in the bathroom. Brownwas killed in the gunfire.405 Police found

no drugs in Brown’s home. The city hassince paid a $2.5 million settlement toBrown’s survivors, and police on theSWAT team that raided Brown’s homewere later indicted for lying about thedetails of the raid. Internal Affairs super-visor and 25-year police veteran JohnDalton, now retired, told the Herald thatthe head of internal affairs at the time, aformer SWAT team member, discourageda thorough investigation of the Browncase. “They were very defensive about thisshooting from the beginning,” Daltonsaid, adding that he’d been “chewed out”for asking difficult questions.

• Charles Inscor. In March 1995, police inOldsmar, Florida, smashed through aglass door, deployed flashbang grenades,and stormed what they thought was theapartment of a drug dealer. Instead, theyfound 31-year-old Charles Inscor, awheelchair-bound man with a respirato-ry problem. The SWAT team soon real-ized it had raided the wrong home.Inscor was hospitalized for a week as aresult of the raid. An ensuing investiga-tion found that though deputies mademany mistakes during the investigationand raid, no disciplinary action would betaken because no rules were broken.According to the St. Petersburg Times,police couldn’t be disciplined because“the Sheriff’s office had no policies con-cerning how the SWAT team shouldserve search warrants.”406

Caught in the CrossfireEven when police have the correct address

and have identified the correct suspect, andeven if the suspect is correctly considereddangerous, too often they don’t take note ofinnocent relatives, acquaintances, neighbors,or children who may be present during theraid and unnecessarily put in harm’s way.Perhaps the most notable example of aninnocent caught in drug raid crossfire is thecase of 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda.

Alberto Sepulveda. Early in the morning onSeptember 13, 2000, agents from the DEA, the

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A Miami SWATteam fired 122rounds into the home of 73-year-oldRichard Brown.Police found nodrugs in Brown’shome.

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FBI, and the Stanislaus County, California,drug enforcement agency conducted raids on14 homes in and around Modesto, Californiaafter a 19-month investigation. According tothe Los Angeles Times, the DEA and FBI askedthat local SWAT teams enter each home unan-nounced to secure the area ahead of federalagents, who would then come to serve the war-rants and search for evidence. Federal agentswarned the SWAT teams that the targets ofthe warrants, including Alberto Sepulveda’sfather Moises, should be considered armedand dangerous.407

After police forcibly entered the Sepulvedahome, Alberto, his father, his mother, his sis-ter, and his brother were ordered to lie facedown on the floor with arms outstretched.Half a minute after the raid began, the shot-gun that officer David Hawn had trained onAlberto accidentally discharged, instantlykilling the 11-year-old. No drugs or weaponswere found in the home.408

The Los Angeles Times reports that whenModesto police asked federal investigators ifthere were any children present in theSepulveda home, they replied, “Not aware ofany.”409 There were three. A subsequent inter-nal investigation by the Modesto PoliceDepartment found that the DEA’s evidenceagainst Moises Sepulveda—who had no pre-vious criminal record—was “minimal.” In2002 he pled guilty to the last charge remain-ing against him as a result of the investiga-tion—using a telephone to distribute mari-juana.410 The city of Modesto and the federalgovernment settled a lawsuit brought by theSepulvedas for the death of their son for $3million.411

At first, Modesto police chief Roy Wasdenseemed to be moved by Sepulveda’s deathtoward genuine reform. “What are we gain-ing by serving these drug warrants?” Wasdenis quoted as asking in the Modesto Bee. “Weought to be saying, ‘It’s not worth the risk.We’re not going to put our officers and com-munity at risk anymore.’”412

Unfortunately, as part of the settlementwith the Sepulvedas, while Modesto an-nounced several reforms in the way its SWAT

team would carry out drug raids, there wasno mention of discontinuing the use of para-military units to conduct no-knock orknock-and-announce warrants on nonvio-lent drug offenders.413

Here are some other cases of peoplecaught in drug-raid crossfire who weren’tsuspects:

• Michael Meluzzi. On July 8, 2005, aSarasota, Florida, SWAT team conduct-ed a drug raid on a home where severalchildren were playing in the front yard.The SWAT team descended from a van,deployed flashbang grenades in front ofand inside the house, then swarmed thehome. Forty-four-year-old Michael Mel-uzzi, who had a criminal record, fledwhen he saw the armed agents exit thevan. Police chased Meluzzi down andfired a Taser gun at him, only partiallyhitting him.

According to Officer Alan Devaney,Meluzzi then reached into his waist-band, leading Devaney to believe Mel-uzzi was armed. Devaney opened fire,killing Meluzzi. Police found no weaponon or near Meluzzi’s body.414

• Ronnie Goodwin. On May 26, 2005, aSWAT team conducted a drug raid onthe Syracuse, New York, home of SonyaGoodwin while looking for drug sus-pect Angelo Jenkins. Police had RonnieGoodwin, 13, on the living room floorat gunpoint when a deputy on theSWAT team fired off several shots at theGoodwin’s dog. One of those bullets ric-ocheted, striking the boy in the leg.Goodwin’s mother later filed a lawsuit,claiming the boy suffered “severe anddebilitating” injuries as a result of thebullet.415

• Cheryl Lynn Noel. On January 21,2005, Baltimore County, Maryland,police raided the Dundalk neighbor-hood home of Charles and Cheryl Noelat around 5 a.m. on a narcotics warrant.They’d obtained the warrant after find-ing marijuana seeds and stems in the

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When Modestopolice asked fed-eral investigatorsif there were anychildren presentin the Sepulveda

home, theyreplied, “Not

aware of any.”There were three.

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Noels’ trash. They deployed a flashbanggrenade, then quickly subdued the first-floor occupants—a man and two youngadults. When officers entered the sec-ond-floor bedroom of Cheryl LynnNoel, they broke open her door to findthe middle-aged woman in her bed,frightened, pointing a handgun at them.One officer fired three times. Noel diedat the scene.416 Friends and acquain-tances described Noel as “a wonderfulperson.” One man collected 200 signa-tures from friends, neighbors, andcoworkers vouching for her character.417

One possible reason Noel brandisheda gun to defend herself: Nine years earli-er, her stepdaughter had been mur-dered.418 Police charged Noel’s husbandand two children with misdemeanorpossession of marijuana and marijuanaparaphernalia.419 A subsequent investi-gation found no wrongdoing on thepart of the police.420

• Rhiannon Kephart. In January 2005,18-year-old Rhiannon Kephart was hos-pitalized in serious condition after shereceived severe burns during a pre-dawnparamilitary raid on a Niagara Fallsapartment.

Kephart—who wasn’t the target of theraid—suffered second- and third-degreeburns on her chest and stomach after theflashbang grenade tossed through a win-dow by the raiding officers landed on thebed where she was sleeping. The grenadeignited the bed sheets, setting off a fire inthe apartment.421

• James Hoskins. On February 6, 2004,Middletown, Pennsylvania, police stormedthe home of James Hoskins on a drug war-rant. They were looking for Hoskin’sbrother Jim, whom they eventually arrest-ed for possessing “a small amount of mar-ijuana, a glass pipe, and about $622,”according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.422

When Hoskins heard the loud thud ofpolice breaking into his home, he got upfrom his bed to investigate, naked andunarmed. As he approached the bed-

room door, a Middletown detectivepushed his way into Hoskins’ bedroom.Hoskins and his girlfriend say the detec-tive never identified himself. Laterexplaining that he mistook the T-shirtHoskins was using to cover his genitaliafor a gun, the detective fired. The bulletentered Hoskins’ abdomen, then rippedthrough his stomach, small intestine,and colon. It eventually lodged in his leg,which later had to be amputated. It was-n’t until weeks later, after he emergedfrom a coma, that Hoskins learned theman who shot him was a police officer,not a criminal intruder.423

Remarkably, the Middletown Town-ship police department saw no need toconduct an internal investigation of theshooting until prodded by the districtattorney.424 The district attorney’s owninvestigation found no evidence of wrong-doing on the part of the shooting offi-cer.425 Hoskins settled a lawsuit with thecity of Middletown in 2005 for an undis-closed amount of money. He settled withthe local township for $250,000.426

• Desmond Ray. On December 11, 2002,police in Prince George’s County, Mary-land, were preparing for a SWAT raid ona suspected drug dealer. Just as the raidcommenced, Desmond Ray—who wasn’tthe target of the raid—got out of aparked car. Cpl. Charles Ramseur saysRay reached for his waistband when exit-ing the car. Ray says he put his hands inthe air.

Ramseur fired his weapon at Ray,striking him in the spine and paralyzinghim. Ray wasn’t armed and was nevercharged with a crime.

In April 2004, an “Executive ReviewPanel” found that Ramseur had no jus-tification for shooting Ray and recom-mended administrative charges againsthim for using excessive force. But thatrecommendation was overruled whenthe internal police review board laterfound no wrongdoing. Ramseur wasreinstated. The county police settled a

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Weeks later, afterhe emerged froma coma, Hoskinslearned the manwho shot himwas a police officer, not acriminal intruder.

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civil suit with Ray for an undisclosedsum of money.427

• Meredith “Buddy” Sutherland. OnOctober 4, 2002, police raided a home inWindsor, Pennsylvania, on suspicion ofdrug activity. According to news reports,the raid was doomed from the start—theSWAT team was aware that someoneinside the home had spotted them, mean-ing they’d lost the element of surpriseSWAT proponents say is the main reasonfor conducting paramilitary drug raids inthe first place. Police raided anyway.

Once inside, police went from roomto room in the dark home. TrooperGregory Broaddus entered a bedroomwhere Meredith “Buddy” Sutherland Jr.was sleeping. Sutherland didn’t live inthe house, but was visiting a friend.Officer Broaddus mistakenly thoughtSutherland was clutching a weaponwhen he entered the room, and fired,striking Sutherland. Sutherland had noweapon and was never charged with acrime.

Other occupants were eventuallycharged with drug crimes. Sutherlandsued in June 2004 for compensation forhis injuries. The state attorney generalasked that the suit be dismissed, arguingthat the officer in question had immuni-ty and that Sutherland was ultimatelyresponsible for his own injuries.428

• Julius Powell. On August 22, 2001,police conducted a paramilitary mari-juana raid on the Powell family in NorthMinneapolis, Minnesota. As they wereapproaching the house to conduct theraid, police shot and killed a pit bull aman was walking just outside the house.One of the bullets ricocheted and struckthe forearm of 11-year-old Julius Powell,who at the time was taking out the fam-ily trash. Police did find some marijuanain the home. The incident—the latest ina series of police shootings in the city—sparked riots and protests.429

• Tony Martinez. On December 20,2001, police in Travis County, Texas,

stormed a mobile home on a no-knockdrug warrant. Nineteen-year-old TonyMartinez, nephew of the man named inthe warrant, was asleep on the couch.When Martinez rose from the couch aspolice broke into the home, deputyDerek Hill shot him in the chest, killinghim.430 Martinez was unarmed andnever suspected of a crime.

A grand jury later declined to indictHill in the shooting.431 The shootingoccurred less than a mile from the spot ofa botched drug raid that cost DeputyKeith Ruiz his life a year earlier. Hill wasalso on the raid that ended with thedeath of Ruiz.432 The same Travis Countyparamilitary unit would later erroneous-ly raid a woman’s home after mistakingragweed for marijuana plants.

• Lynette Gayle Jackson. On September22, 2000, police in Riverdale, Georgia,shot and killed Lynette Gayle Jackson inan early morning, no-knock drug raid.

A few weeks earlier, Jackson had beenat home alone when burglars broke intoher house. She escaped out a windowand called the police while the intrudersransacked her home. When policearrived to answer the burglary call, theyfound a small amount of cocaine in thebedroom, which belonged to Jackson’sboyfriend. While the quantity of cocainewasn’t sufficient to press charges, policebegan a subsequent investigation ofJackson’s boyfriend. That investigationled to the September no-knock raid.Jackson, believing she was again beingrobbed, was holding a gun in her bed-room when the SWAT team entered.Her maintenance man said Jackson hadbeen frightened by the previous bur-glary, telling the Atlanta Journal andConstitution, “I think she was scared andshe probably thought it was anotherbreak-in.”433

• Willie and Charles Alford. On February27, 2002, police raided the home of 77-year-old Willie Alford on a narcotics war-rant issued for his daughter and two

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When Martinezrose from the

couch as policebroke into thehome, deputy

Derek Hill shothim in the chest,

killing him.

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grandchildren. Police from the federalDrug Enforcement Agency; the Cumber-land County, North Carolina, Sheriff’sOffice; and the North Carolina StateBureau of Investigation broke into thehome at 8 p.m. and, according to Alford,“came in shooting.” Two children werealso present in the home. Police shotAlford’s son Charles, a truck driver visit-ing from out of town who wasn’t a sus-pect, in the arm, legs, and side. Policefound no weapons in the home. Two sus-pects named in the warrant were arrestedat the site of the raid, and one was arrest-ed the following day.434

• Jose Colon. On April 19, 2002, policewere preparing to conduct a heavilyarmed late-night drug raid (it included ahelicopter) on a home in Bellport, NewYork. As four paramilitary unit officersrushed across the front lawn, 19-year-oldJose Colon emerged from the targetedhouse. According to the police account ofthe raid, as officers approached, one offi-cer tripped over a tree root, then fell for-ward and into the lead officer, causinghis gun to accidentally discharge threetimes.435 One of the three bullets hitColon in the side of the head, killing him.Police say they screamed at Colon to “getdown” as they approached, though twowitnesses told a local newscast that (a)their screams were inaudible over thesound of the helicopter. The witnessesalso stated that (b) the officers appearedto be frozen before the shooting—no onetripped.436 Though he was visiting thehouse at the time, Colon was never sus-pected of buying or selling drugs. Policeproceeded with the raid and seized eightounces of marijuana. A subsequent inves-tigation found no criminal wrongdoingon the part of police.437 Colon had nocriminal record and was months awayfrom becoming the first member of hisfamily to earn a bachelor’s degree. Hisfamily is pursuing a lawsuit.438

• Christie Green. In December 1998,police in Richmond, Virginia, conduct-

ed a paramilitary drug raid on an apart-ment whose occupant was suspected ofdrug activity. During the raid, Sgt.George Ingram fired “breaching round”shotgun shells—intended to blow thelocks off doors—into the door leadingto the apartment’s kitchen. Ingramfired five rounds, one of which wentthrough the door, striking 18-year-oldChristie Green in the chest. Green laterdied from the wound.

Green didn’t live at the apartment,and police concede they had no reasonto believe she was involved in any drugactivity or that she knew any was goingon in the apartment. Green’s familysued both the city of Richmond and themanufacturer of the round, which isdesigned to dissolve on impact. In 2002,a circuit court jury found that the man-ufacturer of the round wasn’t liable forGreen’s death. Then, in 2004, a judge inRichmond found that the officer whofired the round wasn’t liable either.439 InMarch 2005, the Virginia State SupremeCourt reinstated the case against thecity and the officer, ruling that a jury,not a judge, should make the determi-nation of liability. In January 2006, ajury found Officer Ingram grossly negli-gent in the raid and awarded the Greenfamily $1.5 million in damages.440

• Delbert Bonar. On October 15, 1998,deputies in Washington County, Ohio,made an unannounced nighttime entryinto the home of 57-year-old DelbertBonar, a retired school janitor. Policehad a search warrant to look for stolenweapons and marijuana in the posses-sion of Albert Bonar, Delbert’s son.Police claim that upon their enteringthe home, the elder Bonar grabbed ashotgun and ignored orders to release it.Albert Bonar’s wife disputes thisaccount of the raid. Police shot DelbertBonar eight times, killing him. Policefound a small amount of marijuana inthe house. Though the WashingtonCounty sheriff insisted his men acted

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“I think she wasscared and sheprobably thoughtit was anotherbreak-in.”

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properly, the county paid the Bonarfamily a $450,000 settlement in 2003.441

The Threat to Law EnforcementBecause SWAT raids escalate the violence

associated with executing a search warrant,they not only increase the odds of unintendedcivilian casualties, but they can lead—and haveled—to tragic consequences for police officers,too. The volatility of these raids means thatthe slightest of errors—not just in ensuringthat the information on the warrants is correctbut in the actual execution of the raids—can becatastrophic for everyone involved. The fol-lowing is a partial list of raids in which policeofficers were killed or injured:

• The Jillian King Raid. On January 14,2003, Jillian D. King shot and wounded aMuncie, Indiana, police officer as aSWAT team in black masks and camou-flage conducted a raid on her boyfriend’shome. Officers were serving a no-knockwarrant after finding cocaine inside thecar of another resident of the house.King, who had been previously robbed atgunpoint, fired at what she thought wereintruders.442 “I saw what appeared to be aburglar jerking at the door,” she told thecourt. “I ran down and got a gun andshot out a window.” King was nevercharged with drug possession but wascharged with felony criminal reckless-ness. During her trial, King said if shehad known the intruders were police, “Iwould have opened the door.” The prose-cutor described her as having “an itchytrigger finger.” Though individualMuncie SWAT team members testifiedthey “always” announce themselves andwait before entering a residence, they alsosaid they typically wait just five secondsbetween knocking and forcing entry,clearly not enough time for a suspect inanother room or asleep to answer. Videoof the raid in question showed officersprying open doors before knocking orannouncing.443 King originally pledguilty to the charge, but a judge refused

to accept her plea. The jury deadlocked inher trial.444

• The Lewis Cauthorne Raid. On January7, 2003, prosecutors in Baltimore, Mary-land, announced they would not seekcharges against Lewis S. Cauthorne for fir-ing a .45-caliber handgun at police whobroke down his door during a no-knockraid in November 2002. Cauthorne, athome with his mother, girlfriend, andthree-year-old daughter, heard screamingwhen police broke open the door to hishome and began searching for drugs with-out identifying themselves. Prosecutorsdetermined that Cauthorne, who had noarrest record and whose father had beenrobbed and killed as a cab driver, had rea-son to believe his life was in danger whenhe fired and wounded four of the raidingpolice officers. Police fired back, but fortu-nately, no one in the family was hurt.

Police were acting on a tip from aconfidential informant and claim tohave found six bags with traces of mari-juana, empty vials, a razor with cocaineresidue, and two scales in Cauthorne’shome. But the ensuing investigationfound peculiarities with the evidencethat precluded Cauthorne from beingcharged with even a misdemeanor.There was no record of where exactly inthe home the drugs had been found, forexample, and police told crime lab tech-nicians not to photograph the evidence.The officers who conducted the raidwere also unavailable for interviews withinvestigators until days or weeks afterthe raid took place. Though nevercharged, Cauthorne served more thansix weeks in jail before the chargesagainst him were dismissed.445

• Officer Ron Jones. On December 26,2001, police in Prentiss, Mississippi,served search warrants on two apart-ments in a duplex. One apartment wasoccupied by Jamie Smith, named in thewarrant as a “known drug dealer.” Theother was occupied by Cory Maye, whohad no criminal record and wasn’t

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Though nevercharged,

Cauthorne servedmore than sixweeks in jail.

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named in the warrants. At the time ofthe raid, Maye was asleep with his 18-month-old daughter. After attemptingto enter through the front door, policemoved to the back and broke down thedoor to Maye’s bedroom. Officer RonJones was the first police officer to enter.Maye, who says he feared for his life,fired three times, striking Jones once.Maye’s bullet hit Jones in the abdomen,just below his bulletproof vest. Jonesdied a short time later. Police foundonly traces of marijuana in Maye’sapartment, after first telling reportersthey’d found no drugs at all. OfficerJones was the only officer who conduct-ed the investigation leading up to theraid and apparently kept no notes of hisinvestigation. According to the districtattorney and prosecutor in the Mayecase, all evidence of the investigationleading to the raid on Maye’s home“died with Officer Jones.”446 In January2004, Maye was convicted of capitalmurder for the death of Jones and sen-tenced to die by lethal injection.447

• Deputy Keith Ruiz. On February 15,2001, police raided the Del Valle, Texas,mobile home of Edwin Delamora, wherehe lived with his wife and two children.As two deputies beat down his door witha battering ram, Delamora fired, fearinghe was under attack. One bullet from hisgun struck and killed sheriff’s deputyKeith Ruiz. Delamora had no previouscriminal record and his defense attorneysays the raid on his home was influencedby an anonymous informant who turnedout to be the brother of two sheriff’sdeputies. Information about the infor-mant’s relationship with the police wassuppressed at trial. Delamora was even-tually convicted of capital murder andsentenced to life in prison. Police foundless than an ounce of methamphetamineand one ounce of marijuana in his home.Prosecutors declined to seek the deathpenalty because of substantial doubtover whether Delamora knew the officers

were police or whether he genuinelybelieved them to be intruders.448

• Deputies James Moulson and PhilipAnderson; George Timothy Williams.On January 3, 2001, Jerome County,Idaho, sheriff’s deputies James Moulsonand Phillip Anderson conducted a raidon the home of George TimothyWilliams. The warrant for the raid con-tained information from a confidentialinformant asserting that Williams wasone of the leading suppliers of marijuanain the county. Moulson and Andersonconducted the raid at night, wearingcamouflage. It’s unclear whether theyannounced themselves before entering.Williams fired when the deputiesentered, and the deputies returned fire.All three died in the shootout. A subse-quent search turned up less than fourgrams of marijuana. Lawsuits brought bythe families of both slain deputies and byWilliams’s family revealed that the infor-mant was a woman who lived withWilliams. One suit alleges that the sher-iff’s department threatened to take awaythe woman’s child if she didn’t give themthe information they needed to get thewarrant. The county settled with thefamily of one deputy.449 A federal courtdismissed the lawsuit brought byWilliams’s family. An Idaho state policeinvestigation found no wrongdoing onthe part of the sheriff’s department orthe deputies who conducted the raid.450

• Officer David Eales. On September 24,1999, police in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, pro-cured a no-knock warrant on the homeof Eugene Barrett, suspected of traffick-ing methamphetamine. As the policevehicles descended upon his home,Barrett opened fire. One bullet struckand killed Oklahoma Highway PatrolOfficer David Eales. Barrett claims hewas acting in self defense. After a statejury declined to give Barrett the deathpenalty, he was tried again in federalcourt, convicted, and sentenced todeath.451

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At the time of theraid, Maye wasasleep with his18-month-olddaughter.

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• The Mary Lou Coonfield Raid. InAugust 1996, Tulsa police raided thehome of 70-year-old Mary Lou Coonfieldon a drug warrant. Coonfield awoke tofind a man in black standing in her bed-room, holding a gun. She grabbed a .22-caliber pistol and fired, wounding TulsaCounty Deputy Sheriff Newt Ellenbarger.The warrant for Coonfield was laterthrown out, ruled in both 1996 and 1997to be illegal. In 1999, a jury acquittedCoonfield of assault and battery with adangerous weapon and feloniously point-ing a weapon. Coonfield was acquittedbecause of Oklahoma’s “Make My Day”law, which states that “an occupant of ahouse is justified in using physical force,including deadly force, against anotherperson who has unlawfully entered thehouse if the occupant reasonably believesthat the other person might use any phys-ical force, no matter how slight, againstany occupant of the house.” Coonfield,who’s both hard of hearing and has pooreyesight, says she didn’t hear policeannounce themselves before entering,and thought she was being robbed.452

• Officer James Jensen. On March 13,1996, the Oxnard, California, SWATteam conducted an early morning drugraid on a home that turned out to beunoccupied. In the maze of smoke andlight that followed the deployment of aflashbang grenade, a fellow SWAT teammember, who would later reveal that hisjudgment was clouded by Vicodin, mis-took Officer James Jensen for a hostileoccupant of the house and shot himdead. Jensen’s family won a $3.5 millionsettlement from the city of Oxnard in1999.453

• The Andre Madison Raid. On November7, 1995, police in North Minneapolis,Minnesota, raided the home of AndreMadison. After local media merelyrecounted the police version of events,Minneapolis City Pages conducted an in-depth investigation. According to thepaper’s account, police obtained a no-

knock warrant on Madison’s home after aconfidential informant allegedly pur-chased some marijuana at the residence.454

At about 8 p.m., the Minneapolisparamilitary unit, called ERU, deployedflashbang grenades at the front ofMadison’s home. At the same time,police from the city’s housing unit wereentering the home from the rear.Reports at the time say police began fir-ing when Madison fired his shotgun atthem. But a forensics team later deter-mined that Madison’s gun was neverfired the night of the raid. Instead, aninvestigation conducted by a policechief from a nearby county speculatedthat the housing unit officers mistookthe flashbang grenades deployed by theERU unit for gunfire from the suspectand opened fire themselves. The twopolice units then mistook one anotherfor assailants and began to fire uponone another. When Officer Mark Lanasawent down, shot in the neck by a col-league, the commanding officer calledfor “suppressive fire,” giving officerscarte blanche to shoot at will. Uponhearing that a fellow officer had gonedown, more police soon arrived at thescene. They too joined in the shooting.Hundreds of rounds were fired into thebuilding. There were bullet holes foundin neighboring buildings, as well.Madison, the suspect, was shot in theneck and the arm. Miraculously, no onewas killed.455

Police found only a small amount ofmarijuana in Madison’s home. He wasnever charged with a drug crime. He wascharged with four felony counts of sec-ond-degree assault with a firearm—notfor shooting, but for pointing his shot-gun at police. He could have been sen-tenced to 12 years in prison. Madisoninsists he thought the police wereintruders. Prosecutors then offered tolet Madison plead to a misdemeanorcount of reckless use of a firearm, whichcarries a sentence of just 90 days. The

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The two policeunits then

mistook oneanother for

assailants andbegan to fire

upon one another.

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hitch was that a guilty plea to the lessercharge would have prevented Madisonfrom suing the city.

The subsequent investigation andreport from the outside police chief con-cluded that Minneapolis’s ERU unit“executes too many warrants and reliestoo heavily on dynamic (door-ramming)raids,” explaining that “there are otheralternative tactics that ERU is aware of.However when so many raids are con-ducted using dynamic entry, other tac-tics may be forgotten.”456

Confronting Nonviolent Offenders withViolent Tactics

Drug war supporters and casual observersoften find it difficult to criticize paramilitaryraids ending in the death or injury of nonvio-lent drug users or dealers, noting that thosepeople are, after all, breaking the law. If drugsare found at the scene, even raids ending in asuspect’s death are somehow deemed lesstroubling than raids ending in the deaths ofinnocents. The case against the suspect andin favor of the decision to raid with a para-military unit seems to grow stronger if thesuspect also possesses weapons, or worse,points them at or attempts to use themagainst the raiding police officers. Perhapsit’s true that such scenarios shouldn’t troubleus as much as raids on the homes of inno-cents. But they’re still troubling, for two rea-sons.

First, by some estimates, more than 96million Americans have consumed marijua-na at some point in their lives.457 The over-whelming majority of them have done sopeacefully and at the expense of no one else.Legalizing marijuana is a debate for anothertime. But it would be absurd to suggest thatthe 96 million Americans who have tried orcontinue to smoke marijuana have effectivelygiven up their Fourth Amendment rights.Smoking marijuana, or even selling it tosomeone else, isn’t a violent crime and, con-sequently, doesn’t merit a home invasion bypolice armed with the weaponry and mindsetof soldiers. It certainly doesn’t merit death.

Yet a troublingly high number of these raidsare aimed at marijuana offenders.

Second, as discussed earlier, given the tac-tics associated with no-knock warrants, itisn’t difficult to see why people might grabweapons to defend themselves and their fam-ilies when police violently storm a home lateat night or just before dawn. That a suspectpointed a weapon at police serving a no-knock warrant doesn’t prove that the suspectwas violent or a threat to the public. It onlyproves that someone in the privacy of hisown home was understandably threatenedby the presence of armed intruders.

The fact that police find weapons or mar-ijuana at the scene of a raid, then, still doesn’tmean paramilitary tactics and forced entrywere justified. It’s possible—likely, even—thatmillions of Americans are both harmlessrecreational marijuana users and legal gunowners. The presence of both doesn’t makethem a threat to the community. And theonly legitimate use of paramilitary units likeSWAT teams, indeed the reason they wereoriginally implemented, is to deal with real,immediate, and obvious threats to the publicsafety.

Perhaps the best example of how such vio-lent tactics unleashed on nonviolent drugusers invite tragedy is the case of ClaytonHelriggle.

Clayton Helriggle. Helriggle, 23, lived in ahouse with four roommates in WestAlexandria, Ohio. In September 2002, a localSWAT team conducted a no-knock raid onthe house. Local police had only recently putthe SWAT team together—the most experi-enced members of the team had less than fourhours of tactical training. Others had nevertrained with the SWAT team before. A post-raid report would later find that “wrong dateswere used in an affidavit, and investigatorsquestioned why so little time was provided forsurveillance of the house and why there wereno controlled narcotic purchases from thehouse.”458 According to the Dayton Daily News,the search warrant was “largely based on over-heard conversations, a few hours of surveil-lance, and the word of a convicted felon who

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The search warrant was“largely based onoverheard conversations, afew hours of surveillance, andthe word of a convicted felon.”

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had recently lied to a court to remain free onbond.” Informant Kevin Leitch insisted therewere “pounds and pounds” of marijuana atthe residence and specifically identifiedHelriggle as a dealer. Leitch later told investi-gators he was mistaken. Helriggle’s familysays he was a recreational marijuana smoker,though not a dealer.459

On September 27, 2002, 25–30 police offi-cers emerged from nearby woods andswarmed the farmhouse. SWAT officers deto-nated several flashbang grenades on the firstfloor, then used a battering ram to force theirway into the rented farmhouse. As police inshields and body armor subdued three of thehouse’s occupants, Helriggle, asleep in anupstairs bedroom, was awakened by the com-motion and descended the stairs. Police at thescene say he was carrying a handgun at thetime. Helriggle’s roommates insist that whileHelriggle did own a licensed handgun, he’dleft it in the bedroom and was holding a bluecup of water. Whatever Helriggle was holding,his last words—“What’s going on?”—indicatehe wasn’t aware that the armed intruders inhis home were police. A SWAT team memberinterpreted the item in his hand to be a gunand put a single shotgun blast into Helriggle’schest. He died at the scene, in the arms of oneof his roommates.460

Immediately after the raid, police toldlocal reporters that they’d found marijuana,pills, weapons, drug paraphernalia, and drug“packaging materials” at the home. The pillsproved to be a bottle of prescribed codeine.The weapons were Helriggle’s legal handgun,an old shotgun, and a .22-caliber rifle, notparticularly unusual for an Ohio farmhouse.The “packaging materials” turned out to be abox of sandwich bags. And police found lessthan an ounce of marijuana. No charges werefiled against any of the house’s occupants.461

In addition to the tip from an unreliableinformant, police raided the farmhouse onthe basis of evidence they say they collectedwhile conducting surveillance. As it turnsout, that evidence too was questionable.Officer George Petitt, who both conductedthe surveillance and planned the raid, told

investigators he concluded the farmhousewas a “dope house, just by the activity” of carspulling in and out of the driveway. But whenpressed, he conceded that he had no first-hand knowledge of a single marijuana dealthat took place at the farmhouse.462 Theabsurdity of using a highly armed, poorlytrained SWAT team to carry out a violent,volatile raid on a house rented by recreation-al marijuana users was captured by IanAlbert, a resident of the farmhouse who alsohappened to have just completed Navy SEALtraining. It was Albert who held Helriggle inhis arms as he bled to death. According to theDayton Daily News Albert’s first thought atthe time was “Wow, they took down a farm ofunarmed hippies.”

“If they would have come to the door andsaid, ‘Give us your dope, hippies,’” he added,“we’d have gotten about a $100 ticket.”463

A grand jury and internal investigationlater found no criminal wrongdoing on thepart of police officers but did find the SWATteam “ill prepared” and “lack[ing] experiencein dangerous searches.”464 The grand juryreport also noted that the officers who con-ducted the raid had refused to cooperatewith investigators.465

In January 2004, Greene County, Ohio,prosecutor Bill Schenk suggested the possi-bility of reopening the Helriggle case, sayingthat he was concerned that Helriggle hadbeen publicly portrayed as a drug dealer. “Ithink it’s fair to say that there was no drugdealing by Mr. Helriggle,” he told the DaytonDaily News.466

Despite the fact that he was at the timeawaiting sentencing for more than a dozencrimes, including forgery, theft, burglary,breaking and entering, and safecracking,informant Kevin Leitch was never chargedfor lying to police officers, nor was hecharged for lying under oath to the grandjury investigating the raid.467 These kinds ofcases are increasingly common. It’s now rou-tine for police to deploy SWAT teams to servesearch warrants on nonviolent marijuanasuspects for crimes that in many cases barelyqualify as misdemeanors. These unnecessari-

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“Wow, they tookdown a farm of

unarmed hippies.”

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ly violent and confrontational tactics are,also, increasingly bearing tragic results. Someexamples:

• Leesburg, Virginia. In January 2006,police in Leesburg used flashbanggrenades while raiding the home of amarijuana suspect. Police obtained thewarrant after sifting through trash bagsoutside the house. They found onesmall bag of marijuana.468

• Decatur, Alabama. In October 2005,police in Decatur raided a family homeon a marijuana warrant. Police shot andkilled two of the family’s dogs and,according to the targets of the raid, madejokes about the dead pets while the sus-pects were in custody. Police seized eightgrams of marijuana, or about enough tofill a ketchup packet.469

• Shannon Hills, Arkansas. In February2005, police in Shannon Hills stormed ahome with their guns drawn during atoddler’s birthday party. The target was apregnant woman attending the party.Police arrested her on suspicion of dis-tributing marijuana. Police Chief RichardFriend told one reporter, referencing thebirthday, “We got them something theywish they could return.”470

• Angela King. On May 17, 2004, PerryCounty, Kentucky, police raided thehome of Dennis Ray and Angela Kingon suspicion of marijuana distribution.Deputy Sheriff John Couch shot AngelaKing twice, once in the head, in thecourse of the raid. Police say King fired aweapon at them first, though the cou-ple’s 14-year-old-son—also in the homeat the time of the raid and who was sub-dued with a policeman’s foot on hisshoulder—says he heard only two shots.The police were cleared of all wrongdo-ing in the shooting. Dennis Ray wasarrested on charges of distributing mar-ijuana.471

• Linda Florek. On December 7, 2004, at10 p.m., police in Mundelein, Illinois,broke down the door to the home of 48-

year-old Linda Florek. They thenordered Florek and her son to the floorand handcuffed them. Shortly into theraid, Florek—who has a cardiac condi-tion—told police she was having chestpains, possibly a heart attack. Accordingto a lawsuit later filed by Florek, policerefused to let her take an aspirin or tocall an ambulance. Ninety minutes later,the officers finally believed her andcalled an ambulance. Florek was eventu-ally admitted to a hospital, where doc-tors determined she’d had a heart attackand needed immediate surgery. Policeissued Florek a ticket and fine for themisdemeanor possession of less than2.5 grams of marijuana.472

• Shay Neace. On March 22, 2003, policein SWAT attire raided a home in Canton,Ohio, on a marijuana warrant, lookingfor a man with a history of marijuana dis-tribution. There was a party at the homethat night. As the raid commenced,Officer William Watson of the PerryTownship Police Department made hisway to the home’s second floor, andpulled open the door to a bathroom.Inside, 24-year-old Shay Neace and hisbrother Seth were smoking marijuana.Watson pushed a gun through the doorand ordered everyone in the bathroom tothe floor. Neace and his brother sayWatson never announced himself. Theythought they were being robbed. ShayNeace grabbed Watson’s gun and pushedit away. He then pushed the gunman—Watson—out into the hall. At that point,Watson fired, hitting Neace in the shoul-der and in the back. The second shot leftNeace paralyzed. Officer Watson wascleared of all charges by a grand jury.Neace was indicted by a separate grandjury, then acquitted in a criminal trial ofobstructing an investigation and resist-ing arrest. Neace’s civil suit againstWatson is still pending.473

• Robert Filgo. On September 2, 2003,police in Fremont, California, forcedopen the door of 41-year-old marijuana

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Police entered,forced Filgo tothe floor at gunpoint, thenshot his pet Akitanine times,killing it.

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patient Robert Filgo, who had both adoctor’s prescription and a certificatefrom the city of Oakland permittinghim to possess the drug. Police entered,forced Filgo to the floor at gunpoint,then shot his pet Akita nine times,killing it. The Alameda County DistrictAttorney’s Office later declined to presscharges against Filgo.474

• Marcella Monroe and Tam Davage. InOctober 2002, police in Eugene, Oregon,assembled a massive show of force—52police officers from four agencies in fullSWAT attire, assault weapons, shotguns,and an armored vehicle borrowed fromthe Oregon National Guard—to conducta raid on three homes in the Whitakerneighborhood they suspected of growingmarijuana. All three homes were ownedby one couple, Marcella Monroe andTam Davage. Davage and Monroe livedin one of the homes, with two tenants.They were renovating the other twohouses, which had been destroyed in awindstorm. Police officers were awarethat there were likely to be only three orfour people at most in the three homes,despite the force of 52 officers theybrought for the raid.475

The massive SWAT team was dressedin black or in camouflage and wore skimasks. They deployed flashbang gren-ades, then forced entry into the homeoccupied by Davage, Monroe, and theirtenants without announcing themselves.They pulled the two couples out of bedand wrestled them to the ground. Theyput assault weapons to residents’ heads,tightly handcuffed them, and refused tolet the two women, who were partiallynude, cover themselves (they also tookphotos of the women before allowingthem to dress).476

When Monroe asked if she could puton some clothing, one officer put a blackbag over her head and tightened itaround her neck. Because police at thatpoint had still failed to identify them-selves, Monroe says she believed she was

about to be executed (as for the black bagtactic, the Eugene Police Departmenthad been warned to discontinue the prac-tice by the National Tactical OfficersAssociation, who cautioned that “thispractice is not acceptable in the lawenforcement community,” that it “has nolawful purpose,” and though it is com-monly used in military operations, “it hasno place in civilian operations”).477

Monroe also sustained a cut on her headafter one officer pushed her to theground and put a boot on the back of herneck.478

Police found no plants, no weapons,and only “residue” of marijuana in acouple of plastic bags, for which thecouple’s tenant was issued a misde-meanor citation. Neither Monroe norDavage had a criminal record, and noneof the occupants had any history of vio-lent crime.479

Nevertheless, police still chargedDavage and Monroe with felony manu-facture of a controlled substance. Theycited the evidence they’d found: fans,fluorescent lights, plastic sheeting,timers, potting equipment, sandwichbags, a scale, 24 electrical outlets, and ashop vacuum. Of course, none of thoseitems is illegal, and in the case of Davageand Monroe, all were perfectly sensibleto have around: Davage was a work-at-home jeweler, explaining the lights andthe outlets. Monroe owned a landscap-ing business, explaining the pottingsupplies and vacuum. Of course, asnoted, the two were also renovating allthree houses, as police could have easilyascertained, both during the raid andduring the undercover visit one officerpaid to the couple (posing as a potentialtenant) before securing a warrant for theraid.480 Monroe had come to the atten-tion of police when they’d busted a mar-ijuana growing operation in Portland,where they found cashier’s checks madepayable to her. What the officer failed tomention in the affidavit, however, was

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When Monroeasked if she could

put on someclothing, one

officer put a blackbag over her head

and tightened itaround her neck.

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that the checks were clearly identified aspayment for landscaping services andwere made in the name of Monroe’sbusiness. The most recent check wasdated 1997, five years before the raid.481

In a subsequent lawsuit, Monroe andDavage outlined a host of other mis-leading assertions and questionableomissions in the affidavit that led to theraid on their home. The officer, forexample, cites unusually the high use ofelectricity, the presence of potting soil,an electrical cord, and a “hummingnoise,” as grounds to suspect cultivationof marijuana. The affidavit never men-tioned Monroe’s landscaping business,Davage’s jewelry business, or the factthat the couple was repairing theirhome from storm damage, though theofficer was aware of all three. The affi-davit also makes no mention of the pos-sibility of weapons, disposability of evi-dence, or violent tendencies of any ofthe home’s occupants, all of whichwould have been required to justify ano-knock raid.482

Police defended the raid as entirelynecessary and appropriate, given thewell-known danger posed by peoplewho grow marijuana. The spokesmanfor one of the task forces involved in theraid added that “the community atlarge” approved of such tactics. TheWhitaker Community Council latercondemned the raid at a public neigh-borhood meeting, as well as in a pressrelease.483

• Jeffery Robinson. On July 30, 2002,police stormed the home of JefferyRobinson, a 41-year-old gravedigger inSouth Memphis, Tennessee. Robinsonlived in a small building on the site ofthe cemetery that employed him. Policeconducted the raid on the basis of ananonymous tip that someone was sell-ing marijuana on the cemetery grounds.Raiding officers kicked in Robinson’sbedroom door and immediately shotRobinson in the neck. Robinson died

three weeks later. Police say Robinsoncharged them with a box cutter. Theyalso found a small amount of marijuananear a camper in Robinson’s backyardand charged him with possession, evenas he lay in a hospital fighting for hislife. A review by the Memphis policedepartment’s internal affairs unit andthe Attorney General’s Office found nowrongdoing on the part of the police.For two and a half years, the officerswho participated in that raid remainedon the Memphis police force. But inOctober of 2004, the jury in a federalcivil suit brought by Robinson’s familymade some striking findings:

The jury concluded that the box cut-ter police say Robinson charged themwith—which was never fingerprinted—was planted on Robinson after the raid.During the trial, a medical examinerand blood spatter expert also testifiedthat the shooting couldn’t possibly havehappened the way the officers say it did.Further, the shirt Robinson wore, aswell as the shirt of the officer who shothim, vanished after the raid. Trial testi-mony revealed that police bought a newpolo shirt, still in its wrapper, andtagged it as the shirt Robinson wore thenight he was shot.

The federal jury concluded that theofficers shot Robinson without justifi-cation, then tampered with the evidenceto cover up their mistakes. The jury alsocast doubt on the ensuing investigationby the police department’s internalaffairs division.484 In February 2005, theeight officers involved in the raid werefinally suspended, more than two yearsafter the raid.485 Robinson’s family wona $2.85 million verdict against the offi-cers and negotiated a $1 million settle-ment from the city of Memphis.486

• Vernard Davis. In January 2001, policein Rochester, New York, conducted alate-night drug raid at the home ofVernard Davis. During the raid, OfficerDavid Gebhardt’s shotgun accidentally

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The eight officersinvolved in theraid were finallysuspended, morethan two yearsafter the raid.

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discharged as he stumbled through adark room. The blast hit Davis in thechest, killing him. Davis left behind twotoddlers and one six-year-old. Police didfind a significant amount of drugs inthe room, but no weapons. In 2004, thecity of Rochester awarded Davis’s chil-dren a $300,000 settlement. The presid-ing judge called the shooting “a tragic,unintended accident.”487

• Jacqueline Paasch. In early 2000, aSWAT team from the Milwaukee County,Wisconsin, sheriff’s department brokeinto the home of Jacqueline Paasch andher two brothers on a no-knock drug war-rant for suspicion of marijuana posses-sion. Paasch says she heard footstepsrumbling up the stairs, but before shecould figure out what was happening, herdoor was kicked in, a gun went off, andshe was on the floor, bleeding.

Paasch was hit in the leg, incurred$19,000 in medical expenses, endured ayear of rehabilitation, and was told she’llalways walk with a limp. Police found a“very small amount of marijuana and apipe” in the house, according to localnews reports, though not enough topress charges against anyone in thehouse. In 2000, Paasch settled with theVillage of West Milwaukee for $700,000.“The fact that this can happen to meand my family has made me realize thatit can happen to anyone,” Paasch toldone media outlet. “And that’s reallyfrightening because the police are theones you’re supposed to count on toprotect you.”488

• Troy Davis. On December 15, 1999,police in North Richland Hills, Texas,raided the home of Troy Davis, the sonof a well-known “true crime” writer. Theraid was based on the word of a single,anonymous informant that Davis wasgrowing marijuana in one of the house’sclosets. That informant turned out to beDavis’s uncle, who had tipped off policeafter a long-running dispute withDavis’s mother.

A local municipal judge had original-ly denied Sgt. Andy Wallace’s initialattempt to obtain the no-knock war-rant, citing insufficient evidence. SoWallace merely went to a second judgein Fort Worth and got his approval. Onthe night of the raid one team priedopen (with some difficulty) Davis’s backdoor, while another team went aroundto the front. According to police, Daviscame to investigate the noises outsidehis home while carrying a gun (his fam-ily denies he was holding a weapon).Upon seeing the gun, raiding officersshot Davis in the chest, killing him.According to officers at the scene,Davis’s last words were, “I didn’t know. Ididn’t know.”

Though police did find three mari-juana plants, GHB, and a few small bagsof marijuana in Davis’s home, ensuinginvestigations revealed significant prob-lems in the way Richland Hills policeexecuted the search warrant. In fact, fur-ther investigation found flaws in theway the same police department con-ducted nearly all of its drug raids.

First, attorneys for the Davis familyfound that the police department had apolicy of conducting no-knock raids forevery narcotics search warrant issued, aclear violation of the Supreme Court’sruling in Richards. Second, according tothe Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, “A year beforethe [Davis raid], two of the team’s mem-bers told superiors they were concernedthat lax standards for the unit couldleave it vulnerable to lawsuits.” Teamleader Joe Walley later told a court thathe was “very uncomfortable” about theDavis raid and that he felt the team was“doing a tactical operation without any-thing to go on.” Another officer cameback from sniper school and told superi-ors that nearly everything the NorthRichland Hills SWAT team was doingwas wrong. Yet another later said in adeposition of the Davis raid, “We shouldnever have been there.” According to

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According to officers at the

scene, Davis’s lastwords were, “Ididn’t know. Ididn’t know.”

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court records reviewed by the Star-Telegram, Sergeant Wallace did little cor-roborating investigation after gettingthe tip from Davis’s uncle. There were nocontrolled buys or surveillance.489

After the Davis raid, the two officerswho had warned superiors about inade-quacies with the SWAT team were sus-pended. Another officer who told themedia and the Davis family attorneysabout his concerns quit five monthsafter the raid, citing harassment bysuperiors. Two other officers who wereforthcoming with criticism of the policedepartment also quit.490

In 2004, a state appeals court ruledthe warrant for the raid that killed Daviswas invalid. The court found that thewarrant failed to show that the infor-mant for the raid was reliable, and thatSgt. Wallace failed to do any indepen-dent investigation to corroborate theinformant’s tips.491

Even after the raid and ensuing reve-lations about poor training and prepa-ration, North Richland Hills officialscouldn’t or wouldn’t say what changespolice had implemented to be sure asimilar mistake wouldn’t occur again.The Forth Worth Star-Telegram reportedthat in 2005, during depositions for thecivil suit brought by Davis’s family,responses from city officials indicatedthat raid procedures were never exam-ined after the raid. Attorney MarkHaney, representing the Davis family,expressed frustration that no one fromthe city would claim responsibility foroverseeing police procedures.

“Is there anybody? . . . Who is it? Whocan talk about this topic?” he asked ofNorth Richland Hills city attorney GregStaples.

Staples replied, “That’s not my prob-lem. That’s your problem.”492

The mayor of North Richland Hillstestified that neither he nor the citycouncil were responsible for oversight ofthe city’s police department. The city

manager testified that he oversaw hiringand firing but that police procedureswere determined by the police chief. Thepolice chief said he answered to the citymanager.

When Haney asked the city manger ifhe had ordered any investigation intothe death of Davis, he replied, “No I didnot.” When asked if he had knowledgeof any subsequent city investigation, heanswered, “I’m not aware of any.”493

• Linda Elsea. Elsea smoked marijuana totreat her fibromylagia after the success-ful campaign for Initiative 692, aWashington State measure authorizingthe use of cannabis for medical purpos-es. In 1999, she came out of the bath-room to find a team of SWAT soldiersarmed with assault weapons barrelingup her driveway. She was handcuffed,subject to a body cavity search, andtaken to the police station.494

• Rusty Windle. In early 1999 in Wimberly,Texas, a paid police informant and formerfelon befriended electrician’s assistantAlexander “Rusty” Windle after meetinghim at a bar frequented by tradesmen.The informant had been working the areafor more than four months, winningfriends by throwing parties stocked withbeer and food. The informant convincedWindle to get him two half-ounce bags ofmarijuana, the Texas minimum for afelony charge. When Windle delivered,police obtained an arrest warrant. Onewitness said of the informant, “He askedeverybody to get him pot, he practicallybegged you for it.”495

On May 17, 1999, nine police officersconducted a pre-dawn raid on Windle’shome. Officer accounts differ on whetheror not they announced they were police,though the other targets of raids thatnight (based on information gatheredfrom the same informant) say policenever announced themselves before exe-cuting the warrants.

The police who raided Windle’s homewere dressed entirely in black. Windle

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One witness saidof the informant,“He asked every-body to get himpot, he practicallybegged you for it.”

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awoke, and came to the door with a gun.Police say that when they heard the slideaction of a rifle bolt, Officer ChaseStrapp backed away from the door. As hedid, he tripped over a potted plant.Seeing armed men in black approachinghis house, and watching one retreat fromhis porch, Windle pointed his weapon atStrapp. Strapp fired four rounds, hittingWindle three times, killing him.

Police found less than an ounce ofmarijuana in Windle’s home.496

• Lisa Swartz and the Medical Mari-juana Raids. In August 2004, 38 medicalmarijuana patients filed simultaneouslawsuits against state law enforcementagencies in California for seizing marijua-na from their homes in violation of statelaw. One of them was Lisa Swartz, whodescribed a raid on her home to theonline publication AlterNet:

During the conference call, shetold of being raided at gunpoint in1999. “They came with a narcSWAT team, pointing semi-auto-matic weapons at my grandkids’heads,” she said before breakinginto tears. “It was a terrible experi-ence and totally changed my viewof everything. I used to believe thepolice were there to protect anddefend us. It is just so bizarre thatthey do this to people,” saidSwartz. “Even if we get our proper-ty back, this still takes a terribletoll on our families.”

Swartz spent 18 months and $50,000on her defense before authorities droppedthe charges. “They never apologized andthey never gave me my medicine back,”she said.497

• Willie Heard. On February 13, 1999,police in Osawatomie, Kansas, conduct-ed a 1:30 a.m. raid on the home of 46-year-old Willie Heard. Police say theyannounced themselves, though Heard’sdaughter, who was home at the time, told

the Topeka Capital-Journal, “[A]ll I heardthem say was ‘Get Down! Freeze!’”

Heard awoke, and met officers in hisbedroom with a .22-caliber rifle. Seeingthe gun, a raiding officer opened fireand shot Heard dead. Though thesearch warrant was for crack cocaineand related paraphernalia, police foundonly the burnt remnants of an herb thatcouldn’t be tested. If it had been mari-juana, it would have barely been enoughfor two cigarettes.498 Prosecutors de-clined to press charges against the policewho conducted the raid.499 In 2001,Heard’s family won a $3.5 million settle-ment from Miami County and the citiesof Osawatomie and Paola. The lawsuitcontended that police had targeted thewrong home. At least one member ofthe SWAT team later apologized toHeard’s family for their mistakes.500

• David Doran. In August 1998, police inKansas City, Missouri, conducted a no-knock raid on the home of David Doranon suspicion that he was dealing meth-amphetamine. Doran says he was asleepwhen police entered and that because hethought he was being robbed, he cameout of his bedroom holding a gun.

Police say Doran didn’t comply withorders to get down. Doran says he triedto surrender. Raiding officers shotDoran, inflicting injuries that required atwo-week hospital stay and the loss ofhis only functioning kidney. A jury sub-sequently awarded Doran $2 million,but in June 2005 the Eighth CircuitFederal Appeals Court overturned theaward, concluding that police were justi-fied in conducting a no-knock raid onDoran’s home. Police found no meth-amphetamine, nor did they find any evi-dence that Doran had ever operated amethamphetamine lab. They did find asmall amount of marijuana.501

• Michael Swimmer. In the summer of1998, police in Orange County, Florida,shot and killed 27-year-old MichaelSwimmer in a 2:30 a.m. drug raid. Police

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Raiding officersshot Doran,

inflicting injuriesthat required a

two-week hospitalstay and the loss

of his only functioning

kidney.

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shot Swimmer six times after he con-fronted the raiding SWAT team with ahandgun. Police conducted the raidafter a tip from a confidential infor-mant that Swimmer, an amateur body-builder, was selling ecstasy.502

• Chinue Tao Hashim. On February 21,1998, a deputy in Greenville County,South Carolina, shot and killed unarmeddrug suspect Chinue Tao Hashim duringa SWAT raid. While negotiating a drugdeal with Hashim, one undercover officersaid over the radio that “a gun is on thetable,” meaning that a gun was part ofthe bargain. When the SWAT team raid-ed, Master Deputy John Eldridge inter-preted the radio remark about the gun tomean that Hashim was armed. As theraid commenced, Eldridge thought hesaw Hashim reaching for a gun andopened fire. A subsequent investigationrevealed that what Eldridge thought wasa gun was actually the glint from a wrist-watch.503 Prosecutors declined to presscharges against Eldridge.504

• Barry Hodge. On August 4, 1997,police in Selmer, Tennessee, broke downthe door to the home of Barry andSheila Hodge on a no-knock drug raid.According to a $25 million lawsuit filedby Hodge’s widow in 1998, police neverannounced themselves before entering.By the time the raid was over police hadshot Barry Hodge in the arm and chest,killing him. Sheila Hodge claims shewas thrown to the floor and hand-cuffed, and the Hodge’s daughter waslocked in her bedroom. Press accountsdon’t say if police found marijuana inthe home.505

• Richard Paey. In March 1997, police inPasco County, Florida, arrested RichardPaey on charges of prescription fraud.Paey, a multiple sclerosis patient sufferingfrom the effects of a car accident and sub-sequent botched back surgery, is wheel-chair-bound and paraplegic. His variousailments required him to take significantquantities of painkillers to lead a normal

life. Unfortunately, Florida law made itdifficult for him to get the medication heneeded. Prosecutors accused Paey of forg-ing prescriptions, though they concededthat there’s no evidence he was selling ordistributing. Despite Paey’s condition,and the fact that he obviously posed nothreat to anyone, prosecutors sent aSWAT team to arrest him. Officers in skimasks and body armor, armed withassault weapons, broke down the door toPaey’s home, needlessly terrorizing him,his wife, and their children.506

• Doug Carpenter and Carlos LeBron.On January 11, 1996, a SWAT team inMaitland, Florida, used a 60-pound steelram to break down the door to the apart-ment of Doug Carpenter and his room-mate, Carlos LeBron. Police conductedthe raid after a member of Maitland’spolice “New Resident Visitation Team”came to their apartment shortly after thetwo had moved in and noticed “a strongodor of what he believed to be cannabis.”The two men were handcuffed at gun-point for three hours while policesearched their apartment. The searchturned up 3.5 grams of marijuana, andearned each a $150 fine. Police didn’t sus-pect either man of dealing marijuana,nor were there any complaints fromneighbors. Maitland police chief EdDoyle said the warrant was executedbecause the two men were new to the areaand were renters, which together present“a potential problem to be nipped in thebud.” Doyle added that the raid wasn’t“one we’re going to put on the man-tle.”507

Other Incidents of Paramilitary ExcessFinally, there are several examples from

the past decade in which SWAT teams andparamilitary tactics have been used unneces-sarily and recklessly, but that defy easy cate-gorization. Here are a few of those incidents:

• The Utah Rave Raid. In August 2005,more than 90 police officers from sever-

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A subsequentinvestigationrevealed thatwhat Eldridgethought was agun was actuallythe glint from awristwatch.

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al state and local SWAT teams raided apeaceful outdoor dance party in Utahattended by 1,500 people. Police werearmed with assault weapons, full-SWATattire, police dogs, and tear gas. Many inattendance say police beat, abused, andswore at partygoers. Police deny the alle-gations, though amateur video audioclearly captures police issuing orderslaced with profanity. Police also arrestedsecurity guards on drug possessioncharges, though the guards possessedthe drugs because they’d confiscatedthem from partygoers.508

• The Easton, Pennsylvania, SWATTeam. The small town of Easton, Penn-sylvania, chose to disband its SWATteam in 2005 after a series of incidents,including the shooting death of oneSWAT team member. An editorial in theAllentown Morning Call praised the deci-sion, noting that the SWAT team hadbecome “rude, arrogant, and disrespect-ful,” and had “lost the confidence of thecivilians who supervise them and signtheir paychecks.”509

• The Ahwatukee Raid. In 2004, police inAhwatukee, Arizona, conducted a mas-sively armed, thoroughly bumbling raidon a home they suspected contained ille-gal assault weapons and ammunition. Ina densely populated, upscale neighbor-hood, a SWAT team from the MaricopaCounty Sheriff’s Department, completewith an armored personnel carrier, usedgrenade launchers to fire at least fourrounds of tear gas into the windows ofthe home. The home then caught fire. Asthe owners of the home evacuated, policeofficers actually chased the family’s dogback into the burning house with a fireextinguisher, where it perished in theflames. Andrea Baker, the dog’s owner,says police laughed as she cried at theircruelty. Later, the brakes would fail onthe SWAT team’s armored personnel car-rier, causing it to lurch down the streetand smash into a parked car. The car wasowned by Julie Madrigal, who had fled

the car just moments earlier with hernine-year-old daughter after the two grewfrightened at the sight of the SWAT teamas it fired canisters of tear gas.

The fire completely destroyed thehome, putting homes nearby in thedense neighborhood at risk, too. For allof this, police found no assault weapons.They found only an antique shotgun anda 9-millimeter pistol, both of which werelegally owned. They still arrested 26-year-old Erik Kush, on outstanding traffic vio-lations.510

CBS News reported in 1997 that theMaricopa County Sheriff’s Department’sSWAT team was doing an average of onecallout per week. In an on-camera inter-view, one member of the team toldreporter Jim Stewart the best part of beingon the SWAT team was that, “you get toplay with a lot of guns. That’s what’s fun.You know, everybody on this teams is—you know, loves guns.” Another added,“Hey, the bottom line is it’s friggin’ fun,man. That’s the deal. Nobody wants totake burglary reports.”511

• The Racine Rave Raid. In 2002, policein Racine, Wisconsin, conducted anearly-morning raid on a rave danceparty, kicking in doors, dragging youngpeople from bathroom stalls, throwingothers to the floor, and holding them allat gunpoint. Police issued more than450 citations to partygoers for merelyattending a party where some drugs werepresent, but made only 3 arrests. Thecity of Racine later dismissed nearly allof the charges but still faces a civil law-suit from attendees who claim policeviolated their civil rights.512

• The Farmerville Raids. In 2002, 40police offices from more than 10 differ-ent agencies conducted a pre-dawn raidon a suspected drug hub in Farmerville,Louisiana, in what one local sheriffcalled “a dream come true.” The raid didyield ten arrests, but the violent tacticsenraged the local community. Around100 people marched through the small

80

“You get to playwith a lot of guns.That’s what’s fun.

You know, everybody on this

teams is—youknow, loves

guns.”

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town the next day to protest the opera-tion, in which police forced entry intoseveral homes. “They could have arrest-ed them any time and any day,” protestorganizer Sheila Lewis told the Associ-ated Press. “They are not violent, theyare just normal people. . . . It was like awar zone. People were scared todeath.”513

• The Colorado–Colorado State Foot-ball Game. In 1999, a SWAT team tookthe field when rowdy fans attempted tobring down the goalposts—a tradition incollege football—after a Colorado State–Colorado football game. Armed withweapons and mace, police roughed updozens of fans for 30 minutes after thegame, including Colorado State studentBritney Michalski, who nearly died afteran allergic reaction to the mace. Whenone of Michalski’s friends attempted toget aid for her from one of the police, shetoo was maced.514

• “Operation Jump Start.” In 1997, amultitude of police officers from threeseparate SWAT teams conducted a mas-sive raid on multiple low-income neigh-borhoods in New Britain, Connecticut.The New Haven Advocate reported:

They wore navy blue camouflagefatigues over their body armor.Kevlar helmets covered their heads;black masks covered all but thenoses and eyes of their faces.

A state trooper flew above thescene in a small Cessna aircraft,keeping in radio contact with com-manders on the ground. The statetroops swept onto city streets inside“Peacekeepers,” trucks with batter-ing rams in the front.515

“Operation Jump Start” netted 49 arrests.516

• Ramon Gallardo. In 1997, a SWAT teamfrom Dinuba, California, a town with just12 regular police officers and 15,000 peo-ple and which hadn’t a single reportedhomicide in its history, shot and killed 64-

year-old farm worker Ramon Gallardo.517

Officers in black masks broke downGallardo’s bedroom door while he and hiswife were sleeping. Carmen Gallardo toldthe Los Angeles Times she thought the police“were robbers” when they entered. Accord-ing to police, Gallardo reached for a foldingknife to defend himself, though his familysays Gallardo didn’t own the knife.Gallardo was shot 12 times. Gallardo hadno criminal history. Police were looking fora stolen gun they say was in the possessionof Gallardo’s son. The gun was neverfound. A subsequent investigation by theTulare County district attorney found noimproper behavior on the part of police. Afederal jury later ordered the town ofDinuba to pay the Gallardo family $12.5million in compensation. Dinuba later dis-solved its SWAT team.518

• The Heflin Family. In 1996, a SWATteam in La Plata County, Colorado,descended on a ranch owned by SamuelHeflin. They were looking for evidencerelated to a bar brawl—a cowboy hat,shirt, and a pack of cigarettes. On theway in to Heflin’s home, police forcedtwo children to the ground at gunpoint.They then trained a laser-sighted assaultweapon on Heflin’s four-year-old daugh-ter as she ran screaming into the house.Upon asking to see a search warrant,Heflin was told by SWAT officers to“shut the fuck up.”519

• The Fitchburg SWAT Incidents. In1996, the Fitchburg, Massachusetts,SWAT team burned down an apartmentcomplex after deploying flashbanggrenades in a no-knock raid. The fireleft six police officers injured and 24people homeless.520 In an article on theraid and fire, the Boston Globe noted thethat the Fitchberg SWAT team wasformed in 1990 with the charge, “Toestablish an organized response tounusual high-risk situations, barricadedsuspects, hostage situations, and othersimilar life-threatening events where cit-izen safety or officer safety is at risk.”521

81

In 1997, a SWAT team from Dinuba,California, whichhadn’t a singlereported homicidein its history, shotand killed 64-year-old farmworker RamonGallardo.

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But the 1996 raid wasn’t the first timethe unit had come under criticism. Theteam had a history of botched raids andfaced at least one suit for violating thecivil rights of a group of loiterers theSWAT team was called to break up.522

NotesThe Cato Institute thanks the JEHT Foundationfor its support of this research.

1. Vanessa Bauza, “Couple Sues Hallandale Copsover Botched Bust,” Miami Herald, April 17, 1999.

2. Janette Neuwahl, “Relatives, Friends CriticizeDeath of Man in Sunrise Police Raid,” MiamiHerald, August 10, 2005.

3. Robert Varley, “Family Wants Answers afterMan’s Death in SWAT Raid,” New Haven Register,August 6, 2005. See also Brian Haas, “QuestionsLinger after Shooting,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel,August 7, 2005.

4. Brian Haas and Kevin Smith, “Friends WantAnswers in Fatal SWAT Shooting,” Fort LauderdaleSun-Sentinel, August 10, 2005, p. B1.

5. Brian Haas, “SWAT Team on Drug SearchShoots, Kills Man in His Home,” Fort LauderdaleSun-Sentinel, August 6, 2005, p. B1.

6. Ibid., p. B1.

7. “Officers Who Shot Man Had Drug Warrant,”Associated Press, August 8, 2005.

8. Florida Department of Agriculture andConsumer Services, Division of Licensing, “Howto Apply for a Concealed Weapons License,” http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/weapons/apply.html.

9. Brian Haas, “Relatives of Slain Man HireLawyer,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, August 11,2005.

10. Michael Mayo, “An Ounce of Pot, 10 Bullets,and One Failed Drug War,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, August 16, 2005.

11. Tom Finnegan, “Wrong-House Bust Brings Suit;A Kauai Couple Claims They Were Manhandled inTheir Home by Officers Looking for Marijuana,”Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 12, 2006.

12. Ibid.

13. Leigh Dyer, “Anatomy of a Deadly SWAT

Raid,” Charlotte Observer, September 9, 1998.

14. Leigh Dyer, “SWAT Team Serves Risky Warrants,Often Uses Flashbang Devices,” Charlotte Observer,September 9, 1998.

15. Gary L. Wright and Leigh Dyer, “No Charges in2 Police Killings,” Charlotte Observer, November 4,1998.

16. Marianne Garvey and Zach Haberman,“Nightmare Raid—Old Couple Rocked as CopsHit Wrong Apt.,” New York Post, April 2, 2004.

17. Ibid.

18. Georgett Roberts and Cynthia R. Fagen,“Wrong Apt. Raiders in Sorry State,” New YorkPost, April 4, 2004.

19. Description of typical SWAT deploymentculled from author’s research.

20. Los Angeles Police Department, “History ofSWAT,” http://www.lapdonline.org/organization/oo/sob/metro/swat/swat_history.htm. Nelsoncredited with SWAT concept on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT.

21. Christian Parenti, Lockdown America (NewYork: Verso, 2002), pp. 23, 112.

22. Robert L. Snow, SWAT Teams: Explosive Face-Offs with America’s Deadliest Criminals (New York:Perseus, 2000), p. 7.

23. Mandalit del Barco, “SWAT History a Series ofHighs, Lows in L.A.,” National Public Radio, July22, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4766998.

24. Chris Suellentrop, “What Is the SymbioneseLiberation Army?” Slate, January 24, 2002, http://www.slate.com/?id=2061138.

25. See Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War onDrugs and the Politics of Failure (New York: Little,Brown, 1996), for an extensive history of how thefederal executive and legislative branches milita-rized drug enforcement.

26. 10 U.S.C. §§ 371–74.

27. Diane Cecilia Weber, “Warrior Cops: TheOminous Growth of Paramilitarism in AmericanPolice Departments,” Cato Institute BriefingPaper no. 50, August 26, 1999.

28. Quoted in James Longo, “Tempers Rise duringFace-Off over Initiatives,” Army Times, May 23, 1988.

29. Elaine Shannon, “A G-Man’s Anger,” Newsweek,

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March 18, 1985, p. 30.

30. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint CounterdrugOperations, Joint Pub 3-07.4 (1993).

31. See Weber. See also Timothy Egan, “Soldiers ofthe Drug War Remain on Duty,” New York Times,March 1, 1999; and Megan Twohey, “SWATs underFire,” National Journal, January 1, 2000, p. 37.

32. Egan.

33. Twohey.

34. U.S. Department of Defense, “FrequentlyAsked Questions,” http://www.dla.mil/j-3/leso/leso_faq.htm#q4.

35. Twohey.

36. Ibid.

37. Egan.

38. Peter Cassidy, “The Rise in ParamilitaryPolicing,” Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1997, p. 2025.

39. Chuck Murphy and Sydney P. Freedberg,“Fort Florida,” St. Petersburg Times, March 2, 2003.

40. Egan.

41. Ibid.

42. William Booth, “Exploding Number of SWATTeams Sets Off Alarms; Critics See Growing Roleof Heavily Armed Police Units as ‘Militarization’ofLaw Enforcement,” Washington Post, June 17, 1997,p. A1.

43. Egan.

44. Lesley Stahl, “Gearing Up; As Crime RatesDrop in the U.S., Small, Local Police DepartmentsGear Up for War by Acquiring Military-StyleWeapons, Uniforms, Vehicles, and Aircraft,” 60Minutes, CBS News, December 21, 1997.

45. Peter B. Kraska and V. E. Kappeler, “MilitarizingAmerican Police: The Rise and Normalization ofParamilitary Units,” Social Problems 13 (1997): 1–18.

46. Peter B. Kraska and Louis J. Cubellis,“Militarizing Mayberry and Beyond: MakingSense of American Paramilitary Policing” JusticeQuarterly 14, no. 4 (December 1997): 605–29.

47. Egan.

48. Weber, “Warrior Cops,” p. 7.

49. Kraska and Cubellis.

50. See Egan, for example. See also Kit Wagar, “Part-Time Officers Buy Machine Guns to Form Small-Town SWAT Team,” Kansas City Star, November 5,2001; “Agencies with SWAT Teams,” Madison CapitalTimes, August 18, 2001, p. A4; and Jack Brown,“Paramilitary Groups Are Cropping Up, Even WhereThey’re Not Often Needed,” Philadelphia Inquirer,April 16, 1999.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Murphy and Freedberg.

54. Ibid.

55. J. R. Clairborne, “Members Start Training,Learn New Jobs, Cross Train,” Ithaca Journal,March 15, 2000.

56. John Stith, “Special Operations Units Operatein Three Counties; Madison County to Get One;Cayuga, Oswego Have SWAT Teams; Onondaga’son Hold,” Syracuse Post Standard, April 18, 2004.

57. “Agencies with SWAT Teams,” p. A4.

58. Steven Elbow, “Hooked on SWAT; Fueled withDrug Enforcement Money, Military-Style PoliceTeams Are Exploding in the Backwoods ofWisconsin,” Madison Capital Times, August 18, 2001.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid.

63. Steven Elbow, “Military Muscle Comes toMayberry; U.S. Donates Gear, Grenade Launchers,”Madison Capital Times, August 18, 2001.

64. Bill Clinton, Weekly Radio Address, March 13,1999.

65. U.S. Department of Justice, “Troops to Cops,”http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=76,January 10, 2006. See also, for example, Rep.Martin T. Meehan, “Congressman MeehanAnnounces $32, 292 ‘Troops to COPS’ Grant forCity of Lowell,” press release, August 4, 1999; andRep. Bart Stupak, “Grants Awarded under ‘Troopsto Cops’ Program,” press release, August 4, 1999.For more criticism of the program, see David B.Kopel, “On the Firing Line: Clinton’s Crime Bill,”Heritage Lecture no. 376, Heritage Foundation,September 24, 1993. (“Troops to cops sounds likea nice idea—training retiring military veterans totake police jobs. But do we really want the police to

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become even more like the military—to focus oncapturing an area and destroying an enemy, to relyheavily on high-tech assaults, with, understandablyin a military context, no regard for the rights of per-sons being attacked, and only scant regard for thesafety of bystanders?”)

66. Paul Richmond, “True Stories from the FrontLine,” PDXS, October 22, 1995.

67. Kraska and Kappeler, p. 13.

68. Elbow, “Military Muscle Comes to Mayberry.”

69. Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates andPolitical Power in America (New York: Verso, 1990),cited in Edward Ericson Jr., “Commando Cops,”Orlando Weekly, May 7, 1998.

70. Peter Kraska, “Researching the Police-MilitaryBlur: Lessons Learned,” Police Forum 14, no.3 (2005).

71. Kraska and Kappeler.

72. Britt Robson, “Friendly Fire,” Minneapolis CityPages, September 17, 1997.

73. Kraska and Kappeler.

74. Ericson, “Commando Cops.”

75. Christian Parenti, “SWAT Nation,” Nation,May 31, 1999, p. 16.

76. George Hostetter, “Fresno Disbands CopUnit,” Fresno Bee, December 6, 2001.

77. “Police Take a Military Turn; Counter OtherImage as Neighborhood Peacekeepers,” BostonGlobe, January 11, 1998.

78. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District,“SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics),” http://www.bart.gov/about/police/swat.asp.

79. Kraska and Cubellis, p. 619.

80. Kraska and Kappeler, p. 17 (emphasis added).

81. Ibid., p. 10, also quoted in Weber, “WarriorCops,” p. 8.

82. Kraska and Cubellis, p. 625.

83. Brown.

84. Tim McGlone, “Beach SWAT Team Cleared inShooting; Family Spokesman Cites Guard’s DyingWords, Says Report Contradictory,” NorfolkVirginian-Pilot, November 13, 1998.

85. Jon Frank, “Prosecutors Drop Charge against

Beach Club Owner; He Thought Raid Was ArmedRobbery, Fired Gun at Police,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, December 18, 1998, p. B1.

86. Jon Frank, “Club Owner Sentenced to 10 Daysfor Firing at SWAT Team in ‘98,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, December 8, 1999.

87. Tom Jackman, “SWAT Tactics at Issue afterFairfax Shooting,” Washington Post, January 27, 2006.

88. Tom Jackman, “Officer Won’t Face Charges inShooting Death,” Washington Post, March 23, 2006.

89. For two examples, see Lou Ferrara, “Review:Suspect Most at Fault in Shooting,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 18, 1997 (depressed man asleep in aneasy chair with a gun by his side is shot and killedby a SWAT team—he was never suspected of anycrime); and Adolfo Pedquera, “SWAT Officers KillMan Who Threatened Suicide,” San AntonioExpress-News, May 23, 1999 (SWAT team called tonegotiate with suicidal man ends up killing him).

90. Egan.

91. Twohey.

92. Pete Williams, “Investigation into Government’sIncreasing Number of SWAT Teams,” NBC NightlyNews, April 25, 2000. See also U.S. National ParkService, “The United States Park Police SpecialWeapons and Tactics Team,” http://www.nps.gov/uspp/swatpag.htm.

93. David A. Fahrenthold, “D.C. Police Try aMilitary Look,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004,p. B1.

94. Vic Ryckaert, “Police Start Training to BoostFirepower,” Indianapolis Star, December 1, 2004.

95. Amanda Vogt, “Police Upgrade Firepowerwith Semiautomatic Weapons,” Chicago Tribune,July 24, 2002, Metro, p. 1.

96. Parenti, “SWAT Nation.”

97. Cassidy.

98. For example, see Texas Tactical Police Officers,“SWAT Competition,” http://www.ttpoa.org/competition/index.cfm; “County hosts SWATCompetition,” Bay City News, September 27, 2002;Carolanne Sudderth, “Santa Monica Cops TakeHonors at SWAT Competition,” Ocean ParkGazette, September 30, 2001; and “SWAT RoundupInternational,” http://www.swatroundup.net/.

99. Parenti, “SWAT Nation,” p. 132.

100. Chris Barfield, “Polite, Professional, and

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Prepared to Kill,” SWAT Magazine, December2005.

101. Booth.

102. Egan.

103. David B. Kopel, “Militarized Law Enforcement:The Drug War’s Deadly Fruit,” in After Prohibition: AnAdult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century, ed.Timothy Lynch (Washington: Cato Institute 2000).

104. Twohey.

105. James Bovard, “Drug War Dementia,”http://www.fff.org/freedom/1196d.asp.

106. Kraska and Kapeller, p. 13.

107. Kopel, “Militarized Law Enforcement,” p. 79.

108. Ibid., pp. 79–80.

109. Ibid.

110. Ed Vaughn, “National Guard Involvement inthe Drug War,” Justica, December 1992, p. 3. Formore discussion, see James Bovard, Lost Rights: TheDestruction of American Liberty (New York: St.Martin’s, 1995), p. 201.

111. Weber, “Warrior Cops,” p. 2.

112. Ibid., p. 74. See also James Bovard, Lost Rights,p. 202.

113. For a history of maritime drug policing, seeCharles M. Fuss Jr., Sea of Grass: The Maritime DrugWar, 1970–1990 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,1996).

114. Quoted in Douglas Holt, “West Texas DAQuestions Military Account of Slaying,” DallasMorning News, June 4, 1997.

115. Jack Cole, “End Prohibition Now!” Septem-ber 21, 2005, http://www.leap.cc/publications/endprohnow.htm.

116. Ibid.

117. Bill Donnelly, letter to the editor, WashingtonPost, July 18, 1997, p. A20.

118. Thomas A. Marks, “Northern Ireland andUrban America on the Eve of the Twenty-FirstCentury,” in Global Dimensions of High Intensity Crimeand Low Intensity Conflict, ed. Graham Turbiville(Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago, 1995), p.77. Quoted in Peter B. Kraska, “Crime Control asWarfare: Language Matters,” in Militarizing theAmerican Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of

the Armed Forces and the Police, ed. Peter B. Kraska(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), p. 23.

119. Quoted in George C. Wilson, “AgenciesIntensify Battle to Secure Key Roles in AntidrugEffort,” Washington Post, April 28, 1987.

120. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., “The Thick GreenLine: The Growing Involvement of Military Forces inDomestic Law Enforcement,” in Militarizing theAmerican Criminal Justice System, p. 35.

121. Egan.

122. Ibid.

123. Parenti, “SWAT Nation” p. 16.

124. “Crime Trends: 1990–2000: A Ten-YearSnapshot,” New Haven Department of PoliceService, http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/police/html/stats/crime/trends.html. For comparison,see “Reported Crime in Connecticut,” Bureau ofJustice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice,http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/State/statebystaterun.cfm?stateid=7.

125. Elbow, “Hooked on SWAT.”

126. Ronald Ostrow, “Casual Drug Users ShouldBe Taken Out and Shot, Gates Says,” Los AngelesTimes, September 6, 1990.

127. Stahl.

128. “Crackmire,” New Republic, September 11,1989, p. 7.

129. William J. Bennett, “The Top Drug WarriorTalks Tough,” Fortune, March 12, 1990, p. 74.

130. Quoted in “Crackmire,” New Republic,September 11, 1989, p. 7.

131. Ronald Reagan, Radio Address to theNation, October 2, 1982.

132. Baum, p. 166.

133. Ibid., p. 277.

134. Twohey.

135. Peter Kraska, “Playing War,” in Militarizing theAmerican Criminal Justice System, p. 144.

136. Ibid., p. 143.

137. See also “The Sultans of SWAT,” The Economist,October 2, 1999.

138. Parenti, “SWAT Nation,” p. 16.

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139. Egan.

140. Ibid.

141. Steve Shoup, “Crisis Training Cuts SWATDeployments, Police Official Says,” AlbuquerqueJournal, June 11, 1999.

142. Tom Gabor, “Rethinking SWAT—PoliceSpecial Weapons and Tactical Units,” FBI LawEnforcement Bulletin, April, 1993.

143. “Drug Raid at S.C. High School,” CBSNews.com,November 7, 2003.

144. “Principal at Drug Raid School Resigns,”CNN.com, January 5, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/01/05/school.drug.raid.ap/. Seealso Tony Bartelme, “Raid Settlement Gets InitialOK,” Charleston Post and Courier, April 5, 2006.

145. Mitch Albom, “A Serious Look at WackyWeed and Suffering,” Detroit Free Press, September22, 2002.

146. Frank Owen, “The DEA’s War on PainDoctors,” Village Voice, November 5–11, 2003.

147. Ibid.

148. Ibid.

149. Joel Hochman, “Why Dr. Hurwitz?” DrugSense Weekly, October 31, 2003.

150. Eric Fleischauer, “Physicians Casualties inthe War on Drugs,” Decatur Daily News, October27, 2003.

151. Patrick E. Gauen, “Mistaken Drug Raid IrksVenice Mayor,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 5, 1992.

152. See, for example, Leonard Greene, “NYPD’sNo-Knock Searches Recipe for Disaster,” NewYork Post, May 25, 2003.

153. The Geraldo Rivera Show, December 18, 1996.

154. “Prosecutors Attempt to Show Premeditation,”Associated Press, November 3, 1995.

155. Kristan Trugman, “Power Lures PoliceImpersonators,” Washington Times, September 10,1999, p. C1.

156. “Men Charged with Impersonating Police,Burglary,” Associated Press, January 5, 2006.

157. Glenn E. Rice, “Couple Charged in NorthlandHome Invasion,” Kansas City Star, October 31, 2005.

158. “Man Reports Robbery by 2 Men Posing as

Police,” Detroit Free Press, July 28, 2005.

159. Jim O’Hara, “Man Gets Four Years inRobbery Attempt; Syracusan John M. PhillipsWas Accused of Participating in a Phony DrugRaid,” Syracuse Post Standard, October 4, 2005.

160. Tom Jackman, “Lawyer Recounts BeingAbducted in Alexandria,” Washington Post, January13, 2005.

161. Tom Bailey Jr., “Home Invaders TorturedOwner,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 28,2004.

162. “Two Injured by Men Claiming to Be Cops,”Houston Chronicle, July 21, 2004.

163. David McLemore, “Six Slain in Home Invasionin Texas,” Dallas Morning News, January 6, 2003

164. See, for example, “Two Men Kidnapped byMasked Gunmen,” Houston Chronicle, May 20, 2004;Micehal Weiss, “Gunmen Kick Down Door, RobResidents,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January15, 1998; Michael Weiss, “Police Impostors Steal$450 from Woman,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution,April 28, 1998; “Men Steal Money, Jewelry inRobbery at House,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 27,1999; Michele Munz, “Prosecutor Offers Evidence,Says It Links Man to Invasion of Elderly Couple’sHome,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 2000; “SecondMan Arrested, Third at Large in Killing,” HoustonChronicle, December 7, 2003; “Man, 78, Says TwoFake Officers Rob Him of $15,000,” AssociatedPress, December 31, 2001; “Revere; Two MenPretending to be Police Sought,” Boston Globe,January 9, 2003; Antigone Barton, “Police Searchingfor Fake Officers in Home Invasions,” Palm BeachPost, February 4, 2003; and “Seven Suspected ofPretending to Be Police During Robberies,” SanGabriel Valley Tribune, March 13, 2003.

165. Michael Cooper, “As Number of Police RaidsIncreases, So Do Questions,” New York Times, May26, 1998.

166. Steven Mills and Ken Armstrong, “The JailhouseInformant,” Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1999.

167. “The Informant Trap,” National Law Journal,March 6, 1995.

168. Ibid.

169. Tim Lynch, “Another Drug War Casualty,”Cato Institute Daily Commentary, November 30,1998.

170. “Two Ex-Officers Hoping to Be ‘Vindicated’;Pair Fired after Oregon Shooting Seek Reinstate-ment,” Houston Chronicle, August 25, 2005.

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171. Joseph Mallia and Maggie Mulvihill,“Minister Dies as Cops Raid Wrong Apartment,”Boston Herald, March 26, 1994.

172. Ibid.

173. Maggie Mulvihill, “Three Cops at BotchedRaid Were Sued in Prior Gaffe,” Boston Herald,April 1, 1994.

174. Ibid.

175. Ibid.

176. Doris Sue Wong and B. J. Roche, “Lewin IsFound Not Guilty; Verdict Ends Tainted Case ofSlaying of Detective,” Boston Globe, October 26, 1990.

177. U.S. v. Acosta, 67 F.3d 334 (First Cir. 1995).

178. John Milne, “Role of Informants Questioned,”Boston Globe, December 27, 2005, Metro, p. 17.

179. Katie Wilson, “This Mole’s Still for Hire,”McMinnville News-Register, August 9, 2005.

180. Mike McPhee, “Drug Suspect’s DEA TiesQuestioned,” Denver Post, May 15, 2005, p. C3.

181. “Riverside Drug Cases under Review over Useof Secret Informant,” Associated Press, August 20,2004.

182. Ibid.

183. Ruben Navarrette Jr., “Blame Stretches Farand Wide in Drug Scandal,” Dallas Morning News,November 14, 2003.

184. Jim Schutze, “Fake Justice,” Texas Observer,December 11, 2003.

185. Tim Wyatt, “Narcotics Unit Cited in Reportfrom ‘98 Supervision; Informant Issues ThreeYears before Fake-Drug Case,” Dallas MorningNews, September 22, 2005.

186. Michael Cooper.

187. Myron W. Orfield Jr., “The Exclusionary Rulein Chicago,” Search and Seizure Law Report 19(December 1992), p. 9.

188. Ibid., p. 11.

189. David Migoya, “Judges Rubber-Stamp No-Knocks; Easy Approval among Flaws in Process,Records Show,” Denver Post, February 27, 2000.

190. Ibid. (emphasis added).

191. Ibid.

192. Ibid.

193. Craig Jarvis, “Drug Raids Usually Hit Mark,Occasionally Bomb,” Raleigh News and Observer,July 7, 1998, p. B1.

194. For an overview of asset forfeiture, see Rep.Henry Hyde, Forfeiting Our Property Rights (Wash-ington: Cato Institute, 1995).

195. Nicholas Riccardi, Richard Winton, and JoeMozingo, “Slaying Brings Troubling Scrutiny toEl Monte Police,” Los Angeles Times, September 9,1999.

196. Ibid.

197. Molly Ivins, “Forfeiture Rule in Drug Cases IsOutrageous,” San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune,August 21, 1998.

198. Egan.

199. For just a few examples, see Kyla Dunn,“Reining in Forfeiture,” PBS Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html; Will Vash, “New VehicleMakes Fort Pierce SWAT High-Tech,” Palm BeachPost, May 30, 2003; and Eric Olson, “Seized DrugAssets Aid Police,” Durham Herald-Sun, August 17,2004.

200. Kevin Flynn and Lou Kilzer, “No-Knocks NetLittle Jail Time,” Rocky Mountain News, March 12,2000.

201. Ibid.

202. Edie Gross, “SWAT: ‘Be Safe, Be Strong, BeMean!’” Palm Beach Post, June 8, 1997.

203. Ericson, “Commando Cops.”

204. Frankie Edozien, “Kelly Sticks Up for CopSearches,” New York Post, June 5, 2003, p. 9. Seealso Rivka Gewirtz Little, “More NYPD No-Knocks; New Yorkers Tell Their Tales of BotchedRaids,” Village Voice, June 18–24, 2003.

205. Data from U.S. Department of Health andHuman Services, National Household Survey on DrugAbuse: Main Findings, 1979, 1982, 1988, 1990, 1991,1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000,http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/oas/nhsda.htm,compiled in. Drug Policy Information Clearing-house, “Fact Sheet,” http://www.whitehousedrug-policy.gov/publications/factsht/druguse/#table1.

206. L. D. Johnston, P. M. O’Malley, J. G.Bachman, and J. E. Schulenberg, “Monitoring theFuture: National Survey Results on Drug Use,1975–2003: Volume II, College Students and

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Adults Ages 19–45,” NIH Publication No. 04-5508, Bethesda, Maryland, National Institute onDrug Abuse, 2004.

207. Eric Morgan and David Kopel, The AssaultWeapon Panic: “Political Correctness” Takes Aim at theConstitution, Independence Institute Paper no. 12-91, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado,October 10, 1991.

208. Ibid.

209. Ibid.

210. Bureau of Justice Statistics, “SelectedFindings,” in U.S. Department of Justice, GunsUsed in Crime, July 1995.

211. Gross.

212. Ericson, “Commando Cops.”

213. Christopher Koper, “Updated Assessment ofthe Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts onGun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994–2003,”University of Pennsylvania, June 2004. See alsoJerry Seper, “Ban on Assault Weapons Didn’tReduce Violence,” Washington Times, August 17,2004.

214. Jim Stewart, “Use of SWAT Teams UpGreatly across the Country,” CBS This Morning,December 9, 1997.

215. Donald E. Wilkes Jr., “Explosive DynamicEntry: The Increasing Militarization of the PoliceMakes Citizens into Enemies,” Flagpole, July 30,2003.

216. Fox Butterfield, “When the Police Shoot,Who’s Counting?” New York Times, April 29, 2001.

217. Ibid.

218. Ibid.

219. Jarvis.

220. Semayne’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 194, 195 (K. B.1603).

221. Blackstone Commentaries 3, p. 288.

222. Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301 (1958).

223. Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995).

224. Ibid. at 934, stating that the legal traditionrequiring announcement “was never stated as aninflexible rule requiring announcement under allcircumstances.” For analysis and criticism ofThomas’s opinion, see Robert J. Driscoll, “Un-

announced Entries and Destruction of Evidenceafter Wilson v. Arkansas,” Columbia Journal of Law andSocial Problems 29 (Fall 1995).

225. For analysis, see E. Martin Estrada, “AToothless Tiger in the Constitutional Jungle: TheKnock-and-Announce Rule and the Sacred CastleDoor,” Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 16(April 2005).

226. 18 U.S.C. § 3109

227. United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65 (1998).

228. Ibid. at 72.

229. Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997).

230. Ibid. at 394.

231. Ibid. at 395.

232. Richards v. Wisconsin, p. 394.

233. See, for example, Jim Dwyer, “Police RaidGone Awry: A Muddled Path to the Wrong Door,”New York Times, June 29, 2003.

234. See, for example, Michael J. Bulzomi, “Knockand Announce: A Fourth Amendment Standard,”Law Enforcement Bulletin, Federal Bureau of Invest-igation, May 1997, http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/1997/may976.htm.

235. Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 at 57. See alsoMcDonald et al. v. United States, 335 U.S. at 460(1948), Jackson, concurring, “Many homeownersin this crime-beset city doubtless are armed.When a woman sees a strange man, in plainclothes, prying up her bedroom window andclimbing in, her natural impulse would be toshoot. A plea of justifiable homicide might resultawkwardly for enforcement officers. But an offi-cer seeing a gun being drawn on him might shootfirst. Under the circumstances of this case, Ishould not want the task of convincing a jury thatit was not murder. I have no reluctance in con-demning as unconstitutional a method of lawenforcement so reckless and so fraught with dan-ger and discredit to the law enforcement agenciesthemselves”; and Miller v. United States at 313(1958), “The requirement of prior notice ofauthority and purpose before forcing entry into ahome is deeply rooted in our heritage and shouldnot be given grudging application. Congress, cod-ifying a tradition embedded in Anglo-Americanlaw, has declared in § 3109 the reverence of thelaw for the individual’s right of privacy in hishouse. Every householder, the good and the bad,the guilty and the innocent, is entitled to the pro-tection designed to secure the common interestagainst unlawful invasion of the house. . . .

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Compliance is also a safeguard for the policethemselves who might be mistaken for prowlersand be shot down by a fearful householder.”

236. Anne-Marie O’Connor, “Bereft FamilyDisputes Police Shooting Report,” Los AngelesTimes, August 26, 1999.

237. See, for example State v. Reid, 566 S.E.2d 186(Ct. App. 2002) (North Carolina case finding sixto eight seconds between knock and announcesufficient); State v. Quesnel, 900 P.2d 182 (Ct. App.1995) (Hawaii case finding 3 to 5 seconds was notsufficient); United States v. Adams, 73 Fed. Appx.878 (2003), cert. denied 24 S. Ct. 969 (2003)(Seventh Circuit case finding 2 to 4 seconds suffi-cient if officers spot someone moving in thehouse); Commonwealth v. Means, 614 A.2d 220(1992) (Pennsylvania case finding 5 to 10 secondsinsufficient); and United States v. Knapp, 1 F.3d1026 (10th Cir. 1993) (Tenth Circuit case finding10 to 12 seconds sufficient, even though policeknew the suspect had a prosthesis).

238. Sharon Dolovich, “Invasion of SWAT TeamsLeaves Trauma and Death,” Los Angeles Times,September 22, 2000.

239. United States v. Banks, 124 S. Ct. 521 (2003).

240. Ibid. at 527 (emphasis added).

241. Richards v. Wisconsin at 393. For more analysison this point, see Estrada, p. 83.

242. For more analysis of Banks, see CraigHemmens and Chris Mathias, “United States v.Banks: The ‘Knock-and-Announce’ Rule Returnsto the Supreme Court,” Idaho Law Review 41(2004).

243. See “Booker T. Hudson Jr. v. State of Michigan;Brief for the Cato Institute and National Associ-ation of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiaein Support of Petitioner,” Cato Institute, August 1,2005.

244. Ibid., p. 5.

245. Elliot Grossman, “Entry Tactic Plays KeyRole in Hirko Trial,” Allentown Morning Call,January 26, 2004.

246. Romy Varghese, “Expert: Hirko Was Killed onthe Floor,” Allentown Morning Call, November 13,2003.

247. Elliot Grossman, “Hirko Jury NailsBethlehem Police Officer for Deadly Raid,”Allentown Morning Call, March 5, 2004.

248. Elliot Grossman, “Hirko Deal: $8 Million,

Reforms,” Allentown Morning Call, March 23, 2004.

249. “Federal Court Ruling on No-Knock SearchRaises Questions about Standard Procedure inKansas City,” Drug War Chronicle, January 10,2003, http://www.stopthedrugwar.com/chroni-cle/271/standardprocedure.shtml.

250. Migoya.

251. T. J. Wilham, “Defense Attorney QuestionsSWAT Tactics,” Muncie Star Press, November 14,2003, p. A1.

252. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).

253. Graham Rayman, “Cops in the Clear; Ex-investigators: Board Policy Absolves Police in BadRaids, Newsday, June 9, 2003, p. A3.

254. Ibid.

255. Graham Rayman, “Tracking Errors; BoardAsked to Focus on Wrong-Door Raids,” Newsday,June 12, 2003, p. A17.

256. Karen Freifeld, “Warrant Policy underScrutiny; Spruill Raid Prompts Record-KeepingReview,” Newsday, June 4, 2003, p. A16.

257. “Judge Keeps Documents Sealed in FatalPolice-Raid Case,” Associated Press, June 11,2003.

258. Karen Freifeld, “Media Denied Spruill Info,”Newsday, June 11, 2003, p. A37.

259. Al Guart, “‘Spruill Effect’ on Drug Busts,”New York Post, January 25, 2005, p. 16.

260. Barbara Ross, “Judges to Be Tutored on DrugWarrants,” New York Daily News, August 6, 2003,p. 24. See also Larry Celona, “NYPD Brass Back toSchool,” New York Post, October 13, 2003, p. 6.

261. Florence L. Fincle, executive director, New YorkCity Civilian Complaint Review Board, “PoliceRecommendations Memorandum: Recommend-ations that the New York City Police DepartmentDevelop a Database to Track Search WarrantExecutions,” New York City, January 2003.

262. Personal interview with Andrew Case, direc-tor of communications, New York City CivilianComplaint Review Board, December 5, 2005.

263. Rocco Parascandola, “Police Raid WrongHome; Deaf Brooklyn Mother of Two Pulled fromBed and Handcuffed by Narcotics Cops Who Wereon Wrong Floor,” Newsday, April 8, 2005, p. A6.

264. Finnegan.

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265. Amanda Ferguson, “I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff,”Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, November 19, 1997.

266. Ari Armstrong and David Kopel, “The DrugWar Kills Innocent People,” Denver Post, December30, 1999.

267. Joseph Tanfani and David Kidwell, “Hard-Charging Units Not Held to Account by PoliceBrass,” Miami Herald, November 12, 2002.

268. “SWAT Officer on Trial for Throw-DownToy,” United Press International, May 5, 2004.

269. David Kidwell and Manny Garcia, “ConvictionsPut Spotlight on Cops’ Failures,” Miami Herald, April13, 2003.

270. Matt Lait and Scott Glover, “InvestigatingTheir Own; The LAPD Has Often Led Its CivilianOverseers Astray about Key Facts on Officers’ Useof Deadly Force,” Los Angeles Times, October 17,2004.

271. Ibid.

272. Ibid.

273. Steven Thompson, “Pinellas Sheriff RevisitsDeadly Force Policy,” Tampa Tribune, October 19,2005.

274. Michael G. Mooney, “Panel’s SWAT ReviewDelayed; Lockyer Commission Formed afterShooting Death of Modesto Boy,” Modesto Bee,August 13, 2001.

275. Kimberly Edds, “Lack of Training, ResourcesBlamed for Botched SWAT Team Responses,”Metropolitan News Enterprise, July 19, 2001. LoieFecteau, “Ex-Secretary of State Supports DrugReforms,” Albuqerque Journal, March 16, 2001.

276. California Department of Justice, “AttorneyGeneral’s Commission on Special Weapons andTactics (S.W.A.T.) Final Report,” September 10, 2002.

277. See William F. Buckley Jr. et al., “The War onDrugs Is Lost,” National Review symposium,February 12, 1996. See also Fecteau; and MiltonFriedman, “An Open Letter to Bill Bennett,” WallStreet Journal, September 7, 1989

278. See Dwyer, for example.

279. See, for example, Oklahoma’s law 21 O.S. 1991,§ 1289.25.

280. Personal interview with author, January 24,2006.

281. For another good critique and further analysis,

see Joel Miller, Bad Trip: How the War against Drugs IsDestroying America (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004).

282. Austin Fenner, Maki Becker, and MichelleMcPhee, “Cops’ Tragic Grenade Raid; Storm WrongApt., Woman Dies,” New York Daily News, May 17,2003.

283. William K. Rashbaum, “Report by PoliceOutlines Mistakes in Ill-Fated Raid,” New YorkTimes, May 31, 2003.

284. Fernanda Santos and Patrice O’Shaughnessy,“Snitch Had Shaky Rep,” New York Daily News,”May 18, 2003.

285. Leonard Levitt, “Focus on Kelly, Race afterRaid,” Newsday, May 19, 2003.

286. Ibid.

287. Greene.

288. Ibid,, p. 6.

289. William Glaberson, “Two Suits Filed over PoliceNo-Knock Raids,” New York Times, September 12,2003.

290. Greene.

291. Dwyer.

292. Ibid.

293. Gewirtz Little.

294. Michael Cooper.

295. Ibid.

296. Ibid.

297. Rocco Parascandola, “Cops Pay 1G forRepairs in Raid Mix-Up,” New York Post, March 6,1998, p. 10.

298. Pete Bowles, “Guilty Plea in Cop-MistakeCase,” Newsday, May 6, 1998.

299. Michael Cooper.

300. Ibid.

301. Bob Herbert, “In America; Reprise of Terror,”New York Times, March 12, 1998, p. A27.

302. Kit R. Roane, “Once Again, Police Raid theWrong Apartment,” New York Times, March 21,1998, p. B1.

303. Gewirtz Little.

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304. C. Virginia Fields, “Report and Recommend-ations on the Execution of No-Knock Warrants: Inthe Aftermath of the Death of Alberta Spruill,”Office of Manhattan Borough, June 2003.

305. Ibid., p. 14.

306. Ibid., p. 15.

307. Ibid., p. 16.

308. Ibid., p. 15.

309. Ibid., p. 14.

310. Ibid., p. 11.

311. Robert Gearty and Leo Standora, “100GDeal in Botched Cop Raid,” New York Daily News,March 8, 2004.

312. Melissa Grace, “Raid-Snafu Trial to Open;Suit Blames Cops for Woman’s Death 6 Yrs.Later,” New York Daily News, June 1, 2004.

313. William K. Rashbaum, “Lawyers Urge Councilto Increase Oversight of Police Raids,” New YorkTimes, June 5, 2003.

314. Michelle McPhee, “NYPD Mistakes a Crime,Says Pol,” New York Daily News, June 5, 2003.

315. Dennis Duggan, “Reliving a Wrong Raid byNYPD,” Newsday, June 4, 2003.

316. Gewirtz Little.

317. Ibid.

318. Alan Prendergast, “Unlawful Entry; TheHigh Price of Denver’s Drug War: Lies, Bad Busts,Cops in Harm’s Way—and the Death of anInnocent Man,” Denver Post, February 24, 2000.

319. Howard Pankratz, “Informant: Error Led toFatal Raid Police Tipster Says His MistakeBrought Officers to Mena’s Door,” Denver Post,August 12, 2000.

320. Prendergast.

321. Amy Herdy, “Findings Complicate MenaCase,” Denver Post, January 23, 2003, p. 10.

322. Prendergast.

323. Tina Greigo, “Blaming the Victim,” DenverPost, February 17, 2001.

324. Herdy.

325. John C. Ensslin, “Suit Alleges Conspiracy in

Mena’s Death,” Rocky Mountain News, January 24,2003.

326. Kevin Vaughan, “Former FBI Agent Fights toRenew Mena Suit,” Rocky Mountain News, Novem-ber 17, 2005.

327. Bruce Finley, “$400,000 Settles Mena Case:Webb Steps in to Broker Deal in Fatal No-KnockRaid,” Denver Post, March 24, 2000.

328. “Panel Rejects Moratorium on No-KnockRaids,” Associated Press, June 27, 2000.

329. Elbow, “Hooked on SWAT.”

330. Ibid.

331. Jim Collar, “MEG Changes Reach CriticalStage,” Oshkosh Northwestern, June 23, 2002. Seealso Ed Lowe, “Insurer Targets MEG Changes,”Appleton Post-Crescent, January 6, 2002.

332. Ed Treleven, “Shooting Victim ‘Didn’t Deserveto Die’; Some Data Released in Beaver Dam Case,”Wisconsin State Journal, April 29, 1995.

333. Ibid.

334. Meg Jones, “Family to Get $950,000 inSettlement; Beaver Dam Man Was Shot by DodgeCounty Sheriff ’s Detective,” Milwaukee JournalSentinel, April 30, 1996, p. 1.

335. Chip Mitchell, “Brutality by Dodge CountyDeputies Alleged; Juneau Case Preceded Fatal BeaverDam Raid,” Wisconsin State Journal, June 8, 1995.

336. Ibid.

337. “Agencies with SWAT Teams.”

338. For just a few examples, see Michael Fessier Jr.,“Trail’s End; Deep in a Wild Canyon West ofMalibu, a Controversial Law Brought Together aZealous Sheriff’s Deputy and an Eccentric Recluse.A Few Seconds Later, Donald Scott Was Dead,” LosAngeles Times Magazine, August 1, 1993, p. 26.;Robert Suro, “Police Shooting Focuses BlackAnger in Texas City,” New York Times, August 10,1992, p. 10; Michael Winters, “Raid’s Shock StillFelt; Misguided Bust Slows Two Lives,” Modesto Bee,February 15, 1994, p. A1; Philip J. LaVelle, “ExcessesBlamed in ‘Bad Raids,’” San Diego Union-Tribune,December 13, 1992; Christy Scattarella, “DrugRaids Spark Debate—What Happens When Policewith Warrants Search Wrong House?” Seattle Times,April 22, 1991, p. B1; and John Dentinger, “Narc,Narc; Diary of Police Raids on the Wrong House,”Playboy, April 1990, p. 49.

339. Ibid.

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340. Bob Ross, “War on Drugs Takes Toll on theInnocent,” USA Today, January 11, 1993, p. A1.

341. Ibid.

342. Brian Huber, “Man Says He Was MistakenlyTargeted in Drug Raid,” GM Today, January 5,2006.

343. Douglass Crouse, “Wrong House Hit inCops’ Drug Raid,” Record, December 22, 2005, p.L3.

344. Kathy Jefcoats, “Henry Police Raid ‘Inexcusable’;Couple Gets Wake-Up Call Meant for TheirNeighbor,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 6,2005. See also Kathy Jefcoats, “Suit Threatened inRaid ‘Mistake,’” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 4,2006.

345. “Bel Aire Police Mistake Sunflower Plants forMarijuana,” Associated Press, September 17,2005.

346. Edward Ericson Jr., “Breakin’ All the Rules;Prosecutor Drops Case against Man Who SaysPlainclothes Police Tried to Force Way into HisHome without Warrant,” Baltimore City Paper,December 21, 2005.

347. “N.J. Officers Raid the Wrong House,”Associated Press, August 25, 2005.

348. Cops Raid Wrong Duplex with NoiseDevice,” Associated Press, June 17, 2005.

349. Michael Rigert, “Family Sues SWAT Teamafter Raid on Their Home,” Daily Herald, July 28,2005.

350. Kevin Cole, “Suit Seeks Officers’Testimony;An Omaha Woman Says Police Refuse to Talkabout a Search of Her Home That She Says WasIllegal,” Omaha World-Herald, January 6, 2005. SeeAlso Lynn Safranek, “Lawsuit to Be Dropped overSearch of Home,” Omaha World-Herald, January 7,2005.

351. “Chief to Issue Apology after Police RaidWrong Home,” News Channel 5, Tennessee,September 13, 2004, http://www.deaftoday.com/v3/archives/2004/09/chief_to_issue.html.

352. Michael Serazio, “Pot Shots; Raiding NarcsGet a Hibiscus Low from Their HorticultureAttack,” Houston Press, August 5, 2004.

353. “Man Says Police Raided Wrong Apartment,”Ventura County Star, February 13, 2004.

354. “Judge: Plants Destroyed by Mistake,”Associated Press, August 11, 2005.

355. Ray Quintanilla, “Widow Terrified by CopsMistake; Chicago Officer Raid Wrong Home,”Chicago Tribune, September 7, 2003.

356. Cary Clack, “Family Has Yet to Receive anApology for Mistaken Drug Raid,” San AntonioNews-Express, August 25, 2003.

357. John Stromnes, “Women Sue over DrugRaid,” Missoulian, October 19, 2005.

358. Brent Whiting, “Judge: Police Raid Was‘Attack’; Hell’s Angel Case Evidence Tossed,”Arizona Republic, December 2, 2004.

359. “Lawsuit Accuses Albuquerque Police ofRaiding Wrong House,” Associated Press, July 16,2004.

360. Charles Oliver, “SWAT Team Enters WrongHouse,” Reason, January 1, 2003, p. 14.

361. Jesse Bogan, “SWAT Raid Roughs Up WrongGuys,” San Antonio News-Express, November 21,2002.

362. Jesse Bogan, “SAPD to Probe Storming ofWrong House; Officers Apparently Confused inthe Dark by Look-Alike Residences,” San AntonioNews-Express, November 22, 2002.

363. Robert Crowe, “A Real-Life Melodrama in LaPorte; Mistaking Okra Plants for MarijuanaLeads to Internal Affairs Investigation,” HoustonChronicle, October 3, 2002.

364. Hector Gutierrez, “Cops Crash Couple’sNight at the Opera,” Rocky Mountain News,February 15, 2002.

365. Jonathan Osborne, “Six Months afterBotched Drug Raid, Police Still Are Paying forMistake,” Austin American-Statesman, November10, 2001.

366. “Drug Bust Targets Wrong House,”Associated Press, October 30, 2001.

367. “Drug Raid on Wrong Home TraumatizesResidents,” Waco Tribune-Herald, August 21, 2001.

368. Jason Spencer, “Drug Task Force’s $40,000Error: Raid Turned Up Ragweed, Not Pot,” AustinAmerican-Statesman, December 31, 2002.

369. Alicia Henrikson, “Council Agrees to Pay$95,000 Because Police Barged into WrongHome,” Topeka Capital-Journal, January 9, 2004.

370. Jacqueline Seibel, “Drug Unit OfficerReassigned; No One to Be Suspended after Raidon Wrong Muskego House,” Milwaukee Journal

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Sentinel, March 1, 2001.

371. “Mother, Daughter Sue City, County forMistaken Raid,” Associated Press, June 28, 2001.

372. Ashley Fantz, “Fatal Mistake,” Salon, October19, 2000. See also Warren Duzak, “Innocent ManDies in Police Blunder,” Tennessean, October 6, 2000.

373. Andy Humbles, “Wilson DA Prefers Simplicityto Theatrics,” Tennessean, March 15, 2004.

374. “Family Sues Pueblo Police over BotchedDrug Raid,” Associated Press, January 14, 2005.

375. Shay Wessol, “Pulaski Police Charge Informantin Botched Raid,” Roanoke Times, May 24, 2000.

376. Al Podgorski, “ Hillard Calls to Apologize forMistaken Police Raid,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 22,2000.

377. “Mayor Vows to Repair Damages in Raid,”Associated Press, February 17, 2000. See also“Woman Not Happy to Have Youngsters Cuffedin Mistaken Raid,” Associated Press, February 13,2000.

378. Steven Goode, “Police Invasion Leaves BitterFeelings,” Hartford Courant, November 27, 2001.

379. Anne-Marie O’Connor, “Autopsy Report HasNew Version of Paz Shooting,” Los Angeles Times,October 7, 1999.

380. Ann-Marie O’Connor, “No Drug Link toFamily in Fatal Raid, Police Say,” Los Angeles Times,August 28, 1999.

381. O’Connor, “Autopsy Report Has NewVersion of Paz Shooting.”

382. Richard Winton, “El Monte Officer IsExonerated in Fatal Drug Raid; Probe: Federal,County Officials Say Sergeant Was Justified inUsing Deadly Force Because He Believed aCompton Grandfather Was Reaching for a Gun,”Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2001.

383. Riccardi, Winton, and Mozingo.

384. Jose Cardenas, “Suit in Slaying Leads toApology,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2003.See also Karen Rubin, “Drug Raid Shooting Endsin $3 Million Settlement,” Whittier Daily News,September 25, 2002.

385. Jessie Milligan, “Judge Dismisses Most ofLawsuit in SWAT Death,” Albuquerque Tribune,March 18, 1999.

386. John Sullivan, “Durham Man, 71, Files

Lawsuit over Drug Raid,” Raleigh News andObserver, May 9, 2000.

387. Dan Kane, “Council Committee HearsCritics of Disputed Police Raid,” Raleigh News andObserver, November 5, 1999.

388. Jen Gomez, “Internal Inquiry ExoneratesOfficers in Drug Raid,” Raleigh News and Observer,August 14, 1999. See also John Sullivan, “DurhamDA Absolves Police,” Raleigh News and Observer,July 27, 1999.

389. Kimberly Marselas, “Watchdog Watchers SeeProblems; Some Disturbed by Slow Pace, Recordof Citizens Board That Monitors Police,” DurhamHerald-Sun, July 16, 2000.

390. Pamela Manson, “Drug-Raid Lawsuit Gets aGreen Light; Just Unlucky? Two Sisters Say PoliceViolated Their Civil Rights.” Salt Lake Tribune,June 21, 2004.

391. Bauza.

392. Andrea Elliott, “Drug-Busting Cops Hit RightHome, Chief Insists,” Miami Herald, February 11,2000.

393. “Raleigh Mayor Apologizes for MistakenDrug Raid,” Greensboro News & Record, June 7,1998.

394. Jarvis.

395. Jon Sall, “Suburban Family Terrorized asCops Raid Wrong House,” Chicago Sun-Times,March 28, 1998.

396. Roane.

397. Tom Kertscher, “Botched Drug BustUnresolved; County Offered $1,100 for Door, butProperty Owner Wants $10,000,” MilwaukeeJournal Sentinel, August 11, 2000.

398. Chau Lam and Michael Arena, “Good FaithBlunder,” Newsday, November 8, 1997.

399. Kendall Anderson, “Kaufman CountySheriff Orders Inquiry into Mistaken Drug Raid,”Dallas Morning News, August 24, 1997.

400. “Hard Justice,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 1,2004.

401. Charles Bosworth Jr., “Judge Finds for PoliceOfficer in Bungled Raid; Pontoon Beach CoupleWho Lived Next to Drug Suspect Filed $1 MillionSuit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 24, 1998.

402. Anna Griffin, “Drug Raid at Wrong House

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94

Moves Couple to File Suit,” Charlotte Observer,September 16, 1995.

403. Kerry Prichard, “Concord Family Sues overSearch by Police,” Charlotte Observer, May 25, 1999.

404. Emily Bliss, “Police Note Officer’s Mistake inShooting,” Charlotte Observer, June 30, 1999.

405. “Four Cops Convicted in Miami,” St.Petersburg Times, April 10, 2003.

406. Jane Meinhardt, “No Discipline Planned inMistaken Drug Raid,” St. Petersburg Times, May 4,1995.

407. Rebecca Trounson, “Deaths Raise Questionsabout SWAT Teams; Police: Accidents, Deaths andRaids at Wrong Addresses Put Pressure onDepartments to Disband Groups. Officers DefendParamilitary Units As Effective When UsedProperly,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2000.

408. Ty Phillips and Michael G. Mooney, “HowDid the Gun Go Off? Police Report Fails toAnswer Question in SWAT Shooting of AlbertoSepulveda,” Modesto Bee, January 11, 2001.

409. Trounson, “Deaths Raise Questions AboutSWAT Teams.”

410. “Modesto Man Who Lost Son in Drug RaidPleads Guilty to Reduced Charge,” News 10,September 4, 2002, http://www.news10.net/storyfull.asp?id=2471.

411. Michael G. Mooney, “Boy’s Death CostsModesto $2.55M; Sepulveda Family SettlesLawsuit Filed against City after 11-Year-Old ShotDuring SWAT Drug Raid,” Modesto Bee, June 20,2002. See also Rebecca Trounson, “Suit CouldPut Limit on Use of SWAT Teams; Police: Lawyerfor Family of Modesto Boy Killed in Raid to AskFederal Court to End Role of the ParamilitaryUnits in Drug Cases,” Los Angeles Times, January16, 2001.

412. Phillips and Mooney.

413. Mooney, “Boy’s Death Costs Modesto$2.55M.”

414. “Suspect Is Stunned, Then Fatally Shot,”Associated Press, July 11, 2005. See also Latisha R.Gray, “Fatal Drug Raid Raises Questions;Residents Ask Why a SWAT Team Came in withChildren Present,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, July 31,2005.

415. Elizabeth Doran, “Mother Files ClaimNotice in Shooting of Her Son,” Syracuse Post-Standard, July 1, 2005.

416. Joseph M. Giordano, “Woman Is Shot, Killedby Police in Drug Raid,” Dundalk Eagle, January27, 2005.

417. Joseph M. Giordano, “Petition ReflectsAnguish,” Dundalk Eagle, March 31, 2005.

418. Ibid.

419. Anica Butler, “Three Charged after DrugRaid That Resulted in Fatality,” Baltimore Sun,January 25, 2005.

420. Author interview with Baltimore Countyprosecutor’s office.

421. Dan Herbeck, “Woman Hurt in Drug RaidStill ‘Serious,’” Buffalo News, January 24, 2005.

422. Larry King, “Man Shot in Apartment byPolice Hopes for Justice,” Philadelphia Inquirer,April 7, 2004.

423. Ibid.

424. “Pennsylvania Police Fail to InvestigateShooting of Unarmed Man,” Associated Press,September 3, 2004.

425. Laurie Mason and Harry Yanoshak, “CopCleared in Shooting of Unarmed Man,” BucksCounty Courier Times, April 23, 2004.

426. Larry King, “Middletown Settles PoliceShooting; A Bristol Twp. Man Had Sued after a Feb.Raid Targeting His Brother Left Him Without HisLeft Leg,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 16, 2005.

427. “Prince George’s Police Corporal Cleared in2002 Shooting,” Associated Press, July 15, 2005.

428. Elizabeth Evans, “Man Sues over Drug-RaidInjury; SWAT-Type Team Hit Windsor Home,”York Dispatch, June 9, 2004.

429. Lisa Donovan et al., “Melee Breaks Out afterPolice Shooting,” Saint Paul Pioneer Press, August23, 2003. See also Amy Mayron et al., “After theRiot: Leaders Call for Calm,” Saint Paul PioneerPress, August 25, 2002.

430. Clair Osborn, “Survivors Sue Travis Countyover Fatal Raid,” Austin American-Statesman, May10, 2003, p. B1.

431. Claire Osborn, “Deputy Not Indicted inDrug Raid Death,” Austin American-Statesman,April 4, 2002.

432. Ibid.

433. Joshua B. Good, “Fulton Woman Slain dur-

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ing Drug Raid; Officers Open Fire after VictimGrabbed Gun As They Burst into Bedroom of HerRiverdale Home,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution,September 23, 2000.

434. Christina DeNardo, “Vander Gunfire Probeunder Wraps,” Fayetteville Observer, April 13,2003.

435. Samuel Bruchey, “Victim’s Girlfriend SaysShooting Wasn’t an Accident,” Newsday, April 26,2002.

436. Samuel Bruchey, “Cops’ Account DisputedAgain,” Newsday, April 27, 2002.

437. Bruce Lambert, “No Indictment in Shootingof Young Man in Suffolk Raid,” New York Times,August 9, 2002.

438. Ibid.

439. Alan Cooper, “Police Officer Cleared ofBlame in Woman’s Death; After Jury Deadlocks,Judge Rules Plaintiff Did Not Prove Case,”Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 23, 2004.

440. Tom Campbell, “Damages Awarded in SWATRaid Death,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 14,2006.

441. Jim Phillips, “Relatives of Belpre Man Shot toDeath by Cops Settle Lawsuit for $450,000,”Athens News, June 12, 2003.

442. “Woman Pleads Guilty in Shooting,” IndianaDaily Student, September 16, 2003.

443. Wilham.

444. “Jury Deadlocks on Whether Woman Guiltyin Shooting Muncie Officer,” Associated Press,November 17, 2003. See also “SWAT-Case VerdictDemands Policy Review,” Muncie Star Press,November 25, 2003.

445. Allison Klein and Del Quentin Wilber,“Prosecutor to Drop Charges in Shooting of FourOfficers,” Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2003.

446. Interview with the author.

447. Antoinette Konz, “Jury Sentences Man toDie,” Hattiesburg American, January 24, 2004. Seealso “Source’s Tip Leading to Drug Raid Results inOfficer’s Death,” Baton Rouge Advocate, December31, 2001, p. B2; and Antoinette Konz, “DefendantSays He Didn’t Know Man He Shot Was Officer,”Hattiesburg American, January 23, 2004, p. A1; andJimmie Gates, “Young Officer Shot Dead on DrugRaid Called Hero,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Decem-ber 21, 2001.

448. Jordan Smith, “Another Drug War Casualty,”Austin Chronicle, July 19, 2002. See also JasonSpencer, “Delamora Attorney Says Key Facts WereWithheld,” Austin American-Statesman, July 29,2002; and John Cloud, “Guarding Death’s Door,”Time, July 14, 2003.

449. “Deputy’s Widow, Children Settle withCounty,” Associated Press, July 14, 2003.

450. Patrick Orr, “Eden Raid Used Most StandardPractices; Officers Wore Armor, Called Out, ThenForced Entry,” Idaho Statesman, March 10, 2001, p.1. See also “County’s Insurance Not Enough forTort Claims,” Associated Press, July 16, 2001; and“Judge: Sheriff’s Department Didn’t Act Reckless-ly,” Associated Press, February 24, 2004.

451. Donna Hales, “Jury Hands Cop Killer DeathSentence,” Muskogee Phoenix, November 18, 2005.

452. “Woman Cleared in Shooting of Deputy,”Associated Press, January 15, 1999. See also BillBraun, “Woman Cleared in Deputy Shooting,”Tulsa World, January 15, 1999; and Bog Doucette,“Agent Testifies about Drug Raid,” Oklahoman,January 16, 2004.

453. Don Holland, “Payout to Widow Largest ofKind,” Daily News of Los Angeles, August 11, 1999.

454. Robson.

455. Ibid.

456. Ibid.

457. Substance Abuse and Mental Health ServicesAdministration, “Results from the 2004 NationalSurvey on Drug Use and Health: NationalFindings,” September 2005.

458. “Latest Report on Drug Raid Cites Lack ofCooperation,” Associated Press, October 16,2003.

459. Cathy Mong, “The Death of ClaytonHelriggle,” Dayton Daily News, June 29, 2003.

460. Ibid.

461. Ibid.

462. Ibid.

463. Cathy Mong, “Dozens Protest Preble CountyPolice Shooting,” Dayton Daily News, October 1,2002.

464. Cathy Mong, “No Indictments Returned inHelriggle Death,” Dayton Daily News, February 5,2003.

95

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465. Mary McCarty, “Helriggles Question Convict’sLie,” Dayton Daily News, October 27, 2003.

466. Cathy Mong, “Helriggle Death May BeRevisited; Prosecutor Says New Grand JuryPossible,” Dayton Daily News, January 14, 2004.

467. Ibid.

468. Dan Telvock, “Round Hill Drug Raid TurnsUp Cash, Marijuana,” Leesburg Today, January 12,2006.

469. “Suspect in Raid: Police Came in Firing atDogs,” Decatur Daily, October 15, 2005.

470. “Drug Bust Disrupts Child’s Party,” AugustChronicle, February 9, 2005.

471. “Wound Listed As Serious; Police Say SheFired First,” Lexington Herald-Leader, May 19, 2004.

472. Sara Faiwell, “Woman Accuses MundeleinPolice of Neglect in Suit,” Chicago Daily Herald,November 11, 2005.

473. “Jury Clears Man Left Paralyzed in Shooting,”Associated Press, October 22, 2004. See also EdPritchard, “Brothers Thought Raid Was a Robbery,”Canton Repository, October 21, 2004; and MalcolmHall, “Paralyzed Man Sues Police over Shooting,”Canton Repository, March 23, 2004.

474. Robert Airoldi, “No Charges Filed againstFreemont Resident for Growing Marijuana; ManWill Pursue Complaint against Cops for KillingDog During Raid,” Argus, September 5, 2003.

475. Rebecca Nolan, “Neighbors Call Tactics inDrug Raid Militaristic,” Eugene Register-Guard,December 5, 2002. See also federal complaint filedby Tom Davage and Marcella Monroe in theUnited State District Court for the District ofOregon.

476. Ibid.

477. Brock Simon,” Tactical Performance Review,Eugene Oregon Police Department,” NationalTactical Officers Association, author’s file.

478. Davage and Monroe complaint.

479. Nolan.

480. Ibid.

481. Davage and Monroe complaint.

482. Ibid.

483. Nolan. See also Davage and Monroe com-

plaint; and “Statement of Whitaker CommunityCouncil,” April 30, 2003, http://www.Whitaker.us.WCC_statement.html; and Whitaker CommunityCouncil, “Police Illegally Raid Homes with Tank;Prompts Federal Lawsuit,” press release, http://www.whiteaker,us./attorney_press_release. html.

484. “Botched Drug Raid Could Cost City $1Million,” Associated Press, February 4, 2005.

485. “Eight Memphis Officers Finally Suspendedin Botched Drug Raid,” Associated Press, February5, 2005. See also Jacinthia Jones, “Eight OfficersSuspended in ‘02 Drug Raid—Until Now, TheyRemained on Force Even after Jury Finding,”Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 5, 2005.

486. Ibid.

487. “Children of Man Slain in Drug Raid Get$300,000 Settlement,” Associated Press, June 30,2004.

488. Kevin Nelson, “Domestic Terrorism,” re-printed from the Milwaukee Shepherd’s Express,http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/12408.

489. Mike Lee, “Concerns on SWAT Aired Yearbefore Raid,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 13,2003.

490. Ben Tinsley, “Department Still Looking forClosure; Deadly 1999 Raid Has Led to Departureof 12,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 24, 2005.

491. Domingo Ramirez Jr., “Police Lacked Causefor Fatal Drug Raid, Court Says,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 22, 2004.

492. Dave Lieber, “Answers Hard to Come By inWrongful Death Lawsuit,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 18, 2005.

493. Ibid.

494. Gordy Holt, “Suit Seeks Equal Access toMedicinal Pot,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September8, 1999.

495. Nate Blakeslee, “Drug Warriors; Zero Toler-ance Takes Toll in Hays County,” Texas Observer,October 29, 1999.

496. Ibid.

497. “Give Back Our Medical Marijuana,”AlterNet, August 22, 2004, http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/19632/.

498. “Authorities Release Account of Shooting,Say Marijuana Found in House,” Topeka Capital-

96

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Journal, February 17, 1999.

499. Mike Hendricks, “Questions Remain afterDeadly Raid,” Kansas City Star, April 9, 1999, p. B1.

500. “Family of Man Mistakenly Killed in Police RaidGets $3.5 Million,” Associated Press, June 7, 2001.

501. “Man Shot by Mo. Police Loses $2M Judg-ment,” Associated Press, June 7, 2005.

502. “Review Board Clears 2 in Fatal SWATShooting,” Orlando Sentinel, January 29, 1999.

503. Andrea Weigl, “Family Seeks $10 Millionover SWAT Shooting,” Greenville News, March 13,1999.

504. Andrea Weigl, “Charge Dismissed in SWATShooting,” Greenville News, December 15, 1999.

505. “Woman Files $25 Million Lawsuit overDrug Bust That Left Husband Dead,” AssociatedPress, August 12, 1998.

506. Author interview with Linda Paey.

507. Ericson, “Commando Cops.”

508. Rashae Ophus Johnson, “Witnesses SayUndue Force Used at Rave,” Daily Herald, August23, 2005. See also Michael N. Westley, “PoliceRaid Rave Party in Spanish Fork Canyon,” SaltLake Tribune, December 14, 2005.

509. “Easton SWAT Team’s Behavior: FurtherEvidence It Deserved Dismantling,” editorial,Allentown Morning Call, July 29, 2005.

510. John Dougherty, “Dog Day Afternoon,”Phoenix New Times, August 5, 2004.

511. Stewart.

512. Rob Golub, “City, Police Go on Trial forResponse at 2002 Rave Party,” Racine JournalTimes, January 10, 2005.

513. “Neighbors Protest Late-Night Drug Raid byFBI,” Baton Rouge Advocate, December 23, 2002.See also John Colvin, “Drug Raid Nets Arrests of10,” Monroe News-Star, December 4, 2002. See also“Neighbors Protest Late-Night Drug Raid by FBI;Marchers Say Tactics Excessive, Frightening,”Baton Rouge Advocate, December 23, 2002.

514. Mark Kiszla, “Penalize the Police; UnnecessaryRoughness Hurts Coeds,” Denver Post, September7, 1999.

515. Paul Bass, “Commando Cops; Thanks to theDrug War, SWAT Teams Sweep into SmallCommunities,” New Haven Advocate, October1997.

516. Ibid.

517. Mark Arax, “Small Farm Town’s SWAT TeamLeaves Costly Legacy,” Los Angeles Times, April 5,1999, p. A1.

518. Ibid.

519. Diane Cecilia Weber, “Police Develop MilitaryMindset,” Baltimore Sun, September 12, 1999.

520. Egan.

521. Ric Kahn and Zachary R. Dowdy, “‘Iron Fist’of Police; SWAT Team Use Questioned,” BostonGlobe, May 11, 1998.

522. Ibid.

97

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