How is that worse than "they found pot under the floorboards"?
Worst case they get time off with pay while and internal investigation by their friends determine that procedures are followed.
You are trying to come up with technical solutions (oh install sewer traps). The problem is not technical. It legal, and regulatory. There is no, 0, nada, zilch repercussion for just throwing a flash grenade in barge in. Why install sewer traps and spends all that money? That is irrational from their point of view.
The floor boards and all that sewer stuff is just noise. All those "problems" are just a list hurdles they will never and or even think about solving, that was the main point.
However, I am just gathering facts to figure out what other options are available to police. If certain states, as a citizen I am judged very harshly if I don't exhaust all options before using lethal force, even if it's happening in the heat of the moment. I want the cops to do the same consideration of their other options, at least when it's an operation they get to plan out ahead of time to happen under the time of their choosing.
Maybe they bust you with less, but they'll still bust you.
Does this apply in criminal trials? If there's evidence I was flushing drugs down the toilet (and such evidence would be there), can the state be allowed to assume I had a lot more of the drug than I really did? What are the policy implications?
Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happens and not really willing to experiment.
You can't clog a toilet by flushing cocaine.
At least, you can't afford to.
That would be an interesting use for all those seized drugs. I wonder if they do this.
You could also just rig an external reservoir (or have a full bucket lying around) to rapidly refill the back tank. Though that would of course be fairly incriminating.
A sane person would probably argue that you don't get to run roughshod over people's freedoms just because a particular law is hard to enforce otherwise. But I think that's where it's coming from. You get a pervasive environment where the guys at the top are trying to be tough on drugs and the guys at the bottom keep having to let criminals go because they flushed the evidence, and it's only natural that they'll start to push for more draconian measures.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/01/30/robbery-ring-disguis...
Why isn't this headline news across America?
You could have no-knock raids to capture evidence without needing to stun everybody.
Believe it or not, this is the safest way to do "no-knock" for everyone involved. Think about it- if a law-abiding gun owner was woken up to the sound of unknown men breaking down his door and had time to access her weapon, the situation would be much worse for everyone. There have been many instances of this exact thing happening, often resulting in the death of the raid victims and/or police officers. That is why stun grenades are always the first thing that goes into the building during a no-knock raid.
Tell that to this child and to his parents.
(ie. You can't exactly flush a kilogram of cocaine and a triple-beam down the average toilet in a matter of minutes)
P.S. I'm not defending the cops here, just saying, you don't need truck fulls of drugs to be considered "big-time", and they usually get to the bigger fish via the smaller ones.
Not to mention the fact that the penalty for such an amount is on the order of 10 years in prison (of course, that depends on a lot of factors like where you live, how good your lawyer is, etc., but it's quite a large amount of cocaine.)
For example, you can't flush a scale down the toilet.
If we're talking low-level or mid-level dealers, chances are they have a quantity of pre-packaged amounts of their product on hand and maybe even a firearm or two. Unless they can quickly melt-down and/or liquify all of that stuff, it isn't going down any toilet pipe while the homeowner argues with the cops at the door about the status of a warrant.
They (the cops) need something to barter with. You're much more likely to get useful information from someone facing 10+ years than someone facing 1 year (6 months with good behavior) or probation. They want to find everything.
In most of the US, and I suspect for most of the population, there is no such thing as registering guns (that would be akin to registering laser printers, especially those high capacity ones).
On the other hand it's illegal for a drug user to possess a firearm, 18 USC § 922(g): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/922
(it's just that the average consumer doesn't know about it)
To the extent there's any tracking of printers, it would at most tell you which store it was sold from, there isn't any required serial number recording done at checkout (well, as of when I last bought a color printer in 2006).
What you're referring to would be akin to comparing a bullet found at the scene of a crime with one fired from a seized weapon, albeit easier; a comparison system. Much less of a privacy concern, without any required "registration" involved.
To elaborate on your own example though, pretty sure that even if a firearm is legally registered you can still get in trouble for having it around, especially loaded, in the context of selling illicit substances.
That is almost beside the point, though. How many dealers do you think are using registered firearms to protect their trade? Of that group, how many are registered to the dealer using it and not some random family-member or whatever?
I can't imagine a scenario in which finding a small percentage of the drugs wouldn't hurt the case though. If you can't find it then you can't charge them with possessing it.
I'm sceptical. The police don't need to find 1 kg of cocaine, to find a bag with powder in and powder around the toilet should be sufficient.
The penalty for 1 oz and destroying evidence (if they can prove that) is nothing compared to the penalty for 1 kg.
They could actually make some actionable data for public good.
It seems simultaneously safer and more effective than a no knock warrant.
Additionally, the idea of this sort of raid is to arrest anyone who might be involved when they're found to be in a drug house. If you raid an empty house and find drugs, the owner of said house is gonna go underground if he sees his place crawling with cops, and everyone else is gonna steer clear of it.
Finally, there's a time-sensitivity component - the entire premise of drug dealing is that the drugs are in more or less constant motion, so your chances of success go down the longer there is between tipoff and raid.
I'm not saying that I like no-knock warrants or that they're a good idea, I just wanted to offer some reasons when trying to hit the house when nobody's home might be less safe or less effective.
Hmm ... so, you know, do actual police work? Carefully investigate, all that crap? Nah ... easier to move in with both surprise and massively overwhelming force. And if somebody sneezes and a few of the officers' guns go off in response, well, nothing to see here folks, move along.
They lost my vote with the lie about the toddler "losing a tooth".
I would think you could - that's the 'brick' size you see in the movies, I would guess you could flush that down in 2-3 flushes as long as it didn't clump up too bad.
There'll still be other drugs to chase after but clearly SOMETHING is changing here.
It's not like they're feeding a body into a wood-chipper or anything.
If you're looking for a small amount of drugs on a person who you aren't even sure is present in a single room with a whole pile of occupants including children and you start throwing flashbang grenades then you should be 100% culpable.
Stuff like that has no application in regular policing, definitely not in raids to arrest people on suspicion of some small time crime.
If you go after the hold-out of a nest of armed bankrobbers that have been spotted going into some warehouse then you could make a case for it but even then preferably only after they try to shoot their way out.
This is an absolutely ridiculous level of escalation in a residential area.
Police believe themselves to be at war. Not with one-off groups of armed bank robbers, per se, but with heavily militarized cartels and street gangs like MS-13. If an ordinary police unit knocked on the door of an MS-13 safe house, they'd probably be met with heavily armed resistance.
The problems here are numerous. First, because this was not a cartel safe house, and any degree of diligence sufficient to obtain a no-knock warrant should have made that clear -- which means that either the diligence process is broken, or it was subverted. Second, because very few houses in residential neighborhoods are gang hideouts, and the police are using the theoretical presence of armed gangs as broad, categorical pretext to militarize all of their SOPs, regardless of context, circumstance, degree of escalation, or suspicion of crime. Third, because the level of police militarization in general is growing alarmingly. You'd be hard-pressed to draw a clear distinction, either in armaments or in operational charter, between some of the most heavily armed SWAT teams in this country and small military units.
Stories like this one are not only outrageous; they are horrifying. I don't want to subject myself to recency or memorability bias. But I'd be very curious to see the stats on how many of these incidents are occurring for every SWAT operation that, say, takes down a real bad guy. I'm not in favor of banning SWAT operations altogether, so much as I'm of the strong belief that the "S" in SWAT should always stand for "Special." As in, we've been building a legitimate case for months on this location, and we have extraordinary reason to believe that extraordinary measures are called for.
Check out this case, which happened in my buddy's neighborhood:
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/01/ryan-frederick-loses-appeal-...
TLDR: No knock raid with officer trying to batter down door, guy inside with small amount of weed who had previously been robbed by armed intruders fires through the door and kills officer.
That's my suspicion.
Such hyperbole makes it harder to understand their position and hence to effect useful change.
So it's bad enough they're using military hardware, but then they're not even using it according to proper training.
The Police get all the "toys" but none of the training, or self control.
Just watch any SWAT raid then compare that to a true military RAID, the Control and restraint used by the military is vastly contrasted by the Uncontrolled and Free Firing of a Police Raid.
The police are very dangerous
That is your logic.
Observe the location in an unmarked police car and wait for the suspect to leave, then enter to acquire the evidence.
No confrontation required.
There is no real urgency that justifies a raid when no one is in any danger of violent harm.
EDIT to address the troll: you can run these off of a car battery and stream it over the cellphone network. Quality will be rather good even then. If you can park a car, you can set up the camera. PTZ, too.
king of non-suspicious behavior
Similar to the vaccination blowback after the Bin Laden raid.
How about real life happens in your story:
- Look outs realize there is an anomalous vehicle staged in the neighborhood & alert the team. How do you not get detected?
- Drug dealers arn't home so they send a child/girlfriend to pickup the stash/cash from the home. Do you arrest and charge the 14 year old son of the dealer?
- Dope boys have children/women runners do the logistical aspects. Arrest the dealer, go in the house and find the stash, the girlfriend claims its hers. Dope boy walks free.
Congrats you have done nothing but charged a 14 year old relative and/or girlfriend of the dealer, alerted the hood that its under surveillance and your target flees to a different zone/state/country.
Why would you care if the target flees to another zone/state/country? They're out of your hair and without contacts, they won't be nearly as effective in their objectives.
Since we're talking domestic, they're not nearly as likely to flee to another country or state; people are tied to neighborhoods. Sure, if they're alerted to your surveillance your job gets a lot harder, but that doesn't matter to the innocent.
Crime is down, and police are dangerous. That's the environment we have now. If middle class white people fear the police more than criminals, the police have a problem, and the government has a problem. That prevents them from doing their jobs as well.
There are plenty of ways to avoid violence unless absolutely necessary. Instead police want to raise the level of violence and approach every citizen as an enemy combatant. If a cop wants to play military war fighter, then go join the military.
>drug offenders are perfectly well adjusted people, just politely knock they will let you in every time. >drug dealers don't flee the state/country when they suspect being watched/followed/pending arrest >I wonder why it's called a "trap house"
I hope that you live in an upper middle class community in California to justify the logic behind your post.
You just don't do it for the pot dealer down the street. Instead, you wait for him to leave and break in to get what you need. Preferably in a way that isn't visible from the street so you can arrest the guy before/after.
No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
2) You think the people in this article were "hard drug ring members"?
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/lawsuit-clayton-swat-grenade-ba...
You mean like this guy with "an ounce or less of marijuana"?
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. They aren't being used for "hard drugs" they are being used for "any situation where we might be able to link to someone who uses drugs".
> It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.
Where in here do you see 'hard drug ring'? Or 'hard drugs'?
You:
> I don't think "nonviolent" is a good description of a lot of hard drug rings. They aren't being violent right at the moment, but if they see a cop standing outside the door, they very well might just shoot him. No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
> This seems so disconnected from my comment that I'm not even sure you responded to the right one. Either you mis-replied or you have mentally transformed me into a bizarre caricature of what people who don't completely agree with you must be like.
Funny, I thought that is what your comment was.
I was talking about no knock warrants on nonviolent crimes and you make the false claim I was talking about armed, hard drug criminal organizations. That somehow them being "overused" makes the problem "less real".
I never claimed the problem wasn't real either. I claimed they shouldn't be used in relation to non-violent crimes/criminals in general.
As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
The problem is not that SWAT raids are victimizing an otherwise "probably non-violent" drug world. The problem is that many law-enforcement officers behave in a cowardly way, where the prioritize their well-being over that of the public, so they treat people who are not hardened drug lords as though they were — just in case. That is the big problem.
> As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/causes.h...
Alcohol is more dangerous than all drug related crimes combined to LEO. Not just raids. anything.
Please provide statistical evidence that a drug arrest is more violent/dangerous than other arrests. Please also provide evidence that a large percentage of these arrest involve violent offenders.
And nothing you've said precludes what I said should happen [ search the premise when its unoccupied ].
I'm not sure how that wasn't clear when I explicitly stated it.
Instead of doing this, you continue to make up ridiculous misrepresentations of what I've said.
1. The act being prohibited is nonviolent; injecting heroin, for example, involves zero violence.
2. The prohibition itself creates the violent black market organizations; if heroin were legal, the black market organizations wouldn't exist.
3. Thus yes, nonviolent laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitary
The list of examples (while possibly biased) gives a clear idea of where, having these kinds of miitarised civilian forces, can lead a society.
If someone pulls a knife or even a pistol in Germany, the police will try its best to save even the offenders life - even if it takes hours.
I also find it odd that you included "stand your ground" laws in there. Those laws would actually protect a homeowner using deadly force in opposition to this type of raid in many cases.
I spend a large part of my free time engaged in the online firearms enthusiast community, and I can assure you that no group is more outspokenly opposed to these tactics as we are. The "militarization of police" is such a well-known thing that we have a few memes built around it. "Tacticool" is what we'd probably call these people, and it's something of a running joke that an police officer's professionalism is inversely proportional to the number of cargo pockets the have on their pants.
WRT to Jose Guerena, with the exception of Massachusetts at certain points in the '70s-80s, I don't know of any state that requires or required you to retreat from your own residence. It's unthinkable Arizona would have ever required that.
Finally, I don't see how it helps anything to paint people like us as racists, especially, as LyndsySimon points out, we've been the biggest group fighting for the longest time the tactics that are being discussed here.
I knew about it because my dad was a member of the NRA. The big, bad NRA used to write about police militarization and criminal abuses of force by federal agencies every single month in their member publication, they seemed presciently worried about the encroaching police state two decades before most people. Instead of reporting the same stories of government abuse the NRA aggregated from regional media, the national media painted them as anti-government for calling BATF agents "jack-booted thugs" (because they were) and for saying "in Clinton's administration, if you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens." (because they did, and still do today under two successive administrations.)
SWAT excesses in the "War on Drugs" started in the '70s, there was some back and forth, first encouragement of that, then a reaction to the excesses.
It was Waco, started by the BATF as a "rice bowl raid", that is, a big publicity event prior to asking for more money in the next Federal fiscal year, that really brought this to a head with Dingell, the NRA, gun owners, and other concerned citizens.
I see no evidence of this.
In addition to preserving evidence, they are also issue when it's believe there could be an issue of officer safety. (E.g., someone armed & dangerous.)