SWAT Team Mania: The War Against the American Citizen

SWAT Team Mania: The War Against the American Citizen

I want to preface this with saying that I am pro-police. I've only, in my decades of life, run into one LEO that obviously had a wee-wee smaller than his badge. I've been pulled over a few times, all my fault, and the police officers were never anything but pleasant (well, as pleasant as being pulled over can be). But this thread is not about local police. This is about the abuse power by paramilitary SWAT teams, that operate outside of your local beat cops.

Take a moment to read this, and think about how much this kind of behavior has been ramped up in the last couple of years. The State Department, Department of Education, Department of Energy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service...they all have their own SWAT teams.

Why? Remember, SWAT stands for (S)pecial (W)eapons (A)nd (T)actics. Focus on the "Special Weapons" part. The Dept. Of Education has in their budget a provision for 27 Remington Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns. What, are they planning on an uprising over crappy cafeteria food?

Up until recently I was quite skeptical of anyone crying "POLICE STATE!!!!", but now I'm not sure. My America is dying, and it's being killed by the people sworn to protect and serve us.

Some excerpts:

Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. In some instances, SWAT teams are even employed, in full armament, to perform routine patrols.

While the frequency of SWAT operations has increased dramatically in recent years, jumping from 1,000 to 40,000 raids per year by 2001, it appears to have less to do with increases in violent crime and more to do with law enforcement bureaucracy and a police state mentality. Indeed, according to Kraska’s estimates, 75-80 percent of SWAT callouts are now for mere warrant service. In some jurisdictions, SWAT teams are responsible for servicing 100 percent of all drug warrants issued

Most chilling to me is this from an Army officer currently serving in Afghanistan:

My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan. For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods.

Watch your backs, people. There are terrorists around every corner waiting to blow you up just for existing. These terrorists have no love for you, and they would just as soon you die for their cause as anyone else. Unfortunately for us, these terrorists are paid for by you.

/TOA

Great piece and sadly 100% true.
The recent murder of Jose Guerena is typical of police abuse of force and it shows no signs of abating.
The Supreme Court has revealed it's true colors by recently ruling citizens have no right to defend themselves from illegal police entry into their homes.
Clearly the only rights we have left are completely arbitrary and subject to random nullification.
Which is another way of saying we have no rights at all, we just haven;t experienced them being taken away yet by random acts of the police and government authorities.
This is war all right, a war on the Constitution for the enrichment of the ruling class who are the only ones who seem to enjoy any protections at all from random police actions,
Why is it that no SWAT teams have raided the homes of Congressmen or corporate CEO's?
Surely the laws of chance would favor at least a few random acts of aggression against them by police yet it never happens.
When the law of averages does not apply across all social strata it becomes glaringly obvious that indeed these abuses of power are directed at us, the little people with no money or power.
The Republic is dead and only the myth remains,
Get used to it.

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
The Republic is dead and only the myth remains,
Get used to it.

Truer words have never been spoken.
I have been echoing this sentiment for years.

It is funny to me that you can apparently take a person born in prison, tell him his whole life how free he is
and he will go down defending the prison gaurds and attack anyone who would say otherwise.
As long as you repeat it enough, it becomes reality.
and what's worse is.....almost no one questions it!!!!!

"You are free" - (No you're not)
"Land of the free" - (No it's not)
"Consitutional rights" - (You have none)
"Land of liberty" - (No it's not)
"Bill of rights" - (Exist only on paper)
"Justice system" - (A system where you will find NO justice)


and let's not forget all of the military men and women who are.....wait for it.......wait for it..........Fighting for our "Freedom"!

Well, they aren't doing a very good job of it.
While they are overseas searching for the boogy man, we are getting attacked by our own government.
If this is freedom then I want no part of it.

Now it's time to give up the floor to the "If you think Amerrica is so bad then you kin juss....Geet out" crowd.
Or possibly the "At least America isn't as bad as___" crowd.

Have at it boys.

This was already posted:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I also did a thread on this article from a different angle:

Did the government use SWAT teams to bypass the Posse Comitatus Act?,

Brilliant thread. I would love to see the statistics and graphs/charts showing the SWAT operations numbers increasing over the years.

Law Enforcement is a For-Profit Business.
Jails, Policing, All of it for the Dollars. More contracts for equipment. Making quotas on tickets and arrests and seizures. The police, the jailers, administrators, trainers, the any one who works for a manufacturer of any law enforcement equipment. Builders of Jails and police facilities.

Do you think ANY of them REALLY want to eliminate crime?

How many people are employed directly and indirectly by the system?

Do you think ANY of them REALLY want to arrest the REAL criminals: the rich and powerful corrupt elites. ?

"Eat the rich, its the only thing they are good for." -Aerosmith

reply to post by The Old American


Didn't Germany ride this same trail on its way to war?

What we are witnessing are two things: The giving of police military powers and the giving of military policing powers. The world has seen this before. It was called the Gestapo.

As the economy worsens, and crime eventually increases, dramatically.... Creating an environment where average Americans live in fear of Law Enforcement can be a good deterrent.

The majority of the American people are reluctant to speak out against corrupt law enforcement, because most people know what that could result in for them.

When urban chaos breaks out, where will YOU be?

I agree with you about the SWAT team mania. Here's the latest

U.S. Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton confirmed for News10 Wednesday morning federal agents with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local S.W.A.T., served the search warrant. Hamilton would not say specifically why the raid took place except that it was part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Hamilton said the search was not related to student loans in default as reported in the local media.

OIG is a semi-independent branch of the education department that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as student aid fraud, embezzlement of federal aid and bribery, according to Hamilton. The agency serves 30 to 35 search warrants a year.

"They busted down my door for this," Wright said. "It wasn't even me."

Please watch the videos of the innocent homeowner's account and how his and his children's rights were violated.

Source

C'mon yeah right? They sent the swat team for "criminal offenses such as student aid fraud, embezzlement of federal aid and bribery" Laughable at best.

I think that the SWAT teams sit around with nothing to do for so long that they have a hard time justifying their budgets and funding, so they have to do stuff like this to say that did something in order to continue getting funded.

I agree, they are totally out of control.
There is a shooting range about 3/4 of a mile from my home that the city owns, they rent it out to police departments from all around the area in which I live. When regular LEOs are there qualifying it is relatively quiet, handguns and shotguns for the most part. At least once a week some SWAT type team will be there and it sounds like WWII. It was very loud again today, shotguns and fully automatic weapons. I have no issue with the noise, my concern is - What is all of this training for??? I have lived here 10 years and this type of activity has only been going on since last summer. When I emailed the local city police they just danced around the question and basically said - It's not us, we have no idea what they are training for.

I worry about where this is all headed, I think we are in a heap of trouble at this point...

They also had a very large gathering of multiple jurisdictions here last summer (hundreds of LEOs) to train for what the paper called - Crowd Control - SCARY - some guys are just mindless robots following orders...

reply to post by eastwardbound


Wow, me too.
I live about 3/4 of a mile from a shooting range and on the weekends especially, but also during the week,
it sounds like we are at war and have been invaded by foriegn troops.
I want to know what in the hell they are training for as well.

You don't live just outside of St. louis do you?

reply to post by Screwed


No - northern Illinois - you are right though - it was mostly weekends but lately it can happen on any day of the week - I like shooting as well but these guys creep me me out....

Thanks for the replies, all. I am quite disturbed by this trend. As I said, the America I knew is eroding away. Our rights are being ripped up right along with the very document that's supposed to prevent it. I wonder if that Tree of Liberty is going to be watered sooner rather than later.

/TOA