The paramilitary home invasions authorized by U.S. injustice system is a small part of the increased militarization of the police who use military tactics and decommissioned military hardware stemming from the over decade long military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Also "middle America", European descendant U.S. citizens have little altruism for homeless, undocumented and oppressed nation peoples (New African, Chicano, Native American). Since the late 60s, middle america have had a knee jerk reaction toward more policing, more prisons, harsher criminal sentencing like "three strikes", and reactionary laws like Florida's "stand your ground". Marginalized U.S. inhabitants have little say in how their communities are policed and face police state conditions and a country with the highest per capita prison population.

I'm easily a member of the "European descendant US citizens", and I don't exactly have a lot of say in it either.

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.

Jose Guerena was armed and a Marine vet protecting his family but Tuscon SWAT still killed him(1). But it can go the other way as police have been shot and killed in paramilitary raids. I brought up "stand your ground" laws as indicative of middle America's mindset for more lethal response to the perceived criminal threat in their communities. That mindset has also included support for harsher sentencing and more police, even as the "police industrial complex" grows more into a police state and military occupation.

(1)http://rt.com/usa/168072-us-drugs-swat-police/

"stand your ground" laws, are, I suppose, "more lethal" in the sense they don't require you to retreat if theoretically possible as viewed in the calm of a criminal trial, but I think you're otherwise vastly overstating what the "indicate". Using the loaded term "reactionary" strikes me as entirely out of place.

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.

The militarization of the police predates Iraq 2 by at least a decade, it was happening under the Clinton administration, who authorized letting national guard equipment be loaned to police for any activity that could be plausibly connected to drugs.

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.)

BTW, it was liberal except for some things like gun control Democratic Michigan Congressman John Dingell who first referred to the BATF as "jack-booted" "fascists" (he routinely used that word), as early as 1981. Although at the time he probably was a member of the NRA's 76 member Board of Directors.

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.

Except when they're not. Just some recent example http://bit.ly/1jfqHbr

Yes, I know the case. It was unfortunate. But it happens so rarely. In that case, the police man was overwhelmed, because he got too close.