Comment by bluedanieru
16 years ago
It's amazing how much American law enforcement has changed in the last 70 years. It's the most interesting part of this article IMO. When something like this happens today they serve a no-knock warrant and shoot the kid's dog (well, after shooting the neighbor's dog because they got the wrong house). Zero-tolerance and all.
You've been reading reddit too much.
In the real world that doesn't much happen.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476
"These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects. "
And their own http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ shows 333 over the last 25 years.
That 40,000 number is just SWAT deployments, it doesn't care if they didn't do anything, or if in fact the deployment was correct.
The map only counts cases where the deployment caused a problem or was incorrect (innocent or wrong party).