foxnews.com — You know the drug war has gotten out of hand when Fox News is criticizing it. Interesting opinion piece about SWAT teams and their botched raids. There are links to a Google Map plotting almost 300, and cops killing dogs for their sick amusement in these raids. What really disturbs me is the SWAT officer steeping on a baby's head in the 2ND link.
Jul 22, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ccheathJul 22, 2006
thank ashcroft and gonzo while you're at it
jjesusfreak01Jul 22, 2006
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nofxjunkeeJul 22, 2006
Land of the free indeed. You know I have a general impression from visiting the US that the average person you meet is friendly and not all that different from us Canadians. But things like this scare the hell out of me. In some ways I think the US is really backwards.
kd1sJul 22, 2006
Interestingly the police in the city of Providence seem to be taking a very different approach to marijuana posession. They don't even go after the average user. Stand in Kennedy Plaza, the main bus hub for the state and you'll smell that odor every now and then, with cops in plain sight as there's a police district based in the terminal. From what I've been able to glean, the pd has determined that prosecution efforts are a complete failure, that it's better for them to try to get the big fish than the little fish. In essence, pot has now attained the status of alcohol which by the way is way more toxic and WAY more addictive.
catalystghostJul 22, 2006
Icedman, thank you for finally being a nice foreigner, who doesn't post a comment that says "You guys from the US are idiots." I applaud you for that. Maybe if there were more people like you worldwide, you guys could break through to the rest of the people in US that we are truly screwed. As is, it's too often everyone just serves to tick the patriots off. A true voice of reason. Great job.
catalystghostJul 22, 2006
@JoeJust a little thing I noticed here. A slight error in math. See, you're comparing a number of incidents against an amount of time, which doesn't work mathematically, and thus your percentage would be incorrect.So, with 300 per year(assuming the 300 in the last year is constant over the entire span), and we have an average of 21500 per year over the span between 1981 and 2001, we end up with 1.395% of the SWAT deployments being "botched". Granted, this is an estimate, based off of 300 botches per year over the 20 year span, but you can get the idea. Or, if you want simply the studied year, we have 300 out of the 40000 deployments being botched. That's .75% Sure, it might not seem like much, but that's well over your .001% guess. Additionally, being that these incidents can often be life or death situations (hence the reason they're sending in a SWAT team), that's far over the amount that should be allowed. Even your .001% would be unreasonable. In law enforcement, there should be NO room for error. Let's even take your misread comment, of having it be 300 over the span of the whole 30 years. Doing a bit of math, we have a rough estimate of 645000 total SWAT team deployments over 30 years. We get a percentage of... .000465% Now, that's not exactly huge, but still, the situations that a SWAT team member face allow no room for error. My job involves serving coffee. The most life-threatening thing that happens to me or the people I serve is really hot liquid getting spilled. I can have a larger room for error (though it's not the best idea if I want to keep my job). A SWAT team member faces people with guns, and has a gun of his own. He is not allowed the same room for error as I am. In conclusion, your criticism of others' jobs is irrelevant, your math is flawed, and your logic fails. Please, take a minute to think (and read) next time, instead of shooting out something that makes you look stupid. Your bias shows, largely.
dethblowJul 23, 2006
Hey, dick wad, I have laced up boots, grabbed my weapon and defended our country, so here's my 2 cents: I don't like what you just said, but I would give my life, even for complete morons such as yourself, for you to be able to say whatever the f**k you want. But if you believe that our freedoms aren't being encroached on, you need to pull your head out of your ass. I bet you are just a little bitch who feels he needs to vent so he can feel better about himself because "daddy never told him he loved him, or was proud of him." Jack-ass.
nofxjunkeeJul 23, 2006
Meh, I disagree. But hey, whatever, Kill 'Em All! Yeah! :/
crexJul 24, 2006
Beyond really horrifying stories like the SWAT and DEA ones in the article, I've always been bugged by the high speed chases where the cops are after a guy because he might have drugs (or even other petty things).Every so often when I want to feel better about myself I'll turn on one of those police video shows and watch the underside of humanity. Every so often I see a video where a guy is speeding, has out of date tags, is suspected to have some pot, etc and when the cops try to pull him over the driver attempts to run from the cops. This results in high speed chase with the guy doing 90 mph screaming past other cars, side swiping them, etc with a half dozen cops behind him. I've always wondered how many of these chases end in some innocent bystanding getting killed when the suspect or a cop loses control at 90 mph and hits their car? Why can we not realize that the nice bashboard camera in the cop cruiser has already recorded the guy's plate number, so the cops can just storm his house at 2 am when the guy is passed out drunk? Instead they chase after him and risk killing some innocent person, when the cops could just turn their lights off, U turn and let the guy go.Now if the guy in the car is armed and driving around killing people, or has a history of killing people, or whatever I can see running him down. But chasing him over reefer or whatever does nothing but endanger the lives of others.
mykindaspamJul 26, 2006
While the original story is disturbing, this guy's comment about it just reinforces people's desire to limit exposure to junkie-babble like this by strictly enforcing drug laws. Put down the bong and drink a Red Bull.