Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Columbia Police Department is catching a full ration of crap

over this raid, as they should; maybe, just maybe, having that many of the citizens pissed at them and their methods will cause some change. The problem?
But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected. Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing.
And if they are, they deserve the same level of crap Columbia PD is getting.

I like Insty's idea:
"I’d be happy withstripping official immunity in no-knock raids, so that police — and, more significantly, supervising officials — would become liable for anything that goes wrong. No-knock raids should be extraordinary measures, only used when there is imminent threat of death or great bodily harm. That’s not the case in the vast, vast majority of no-knock raids. And illegal breakins are . . . illegal. They don’t become less so, somehow, when engaged in by those sworn to uphold the law."

2 comments:

Keith said...

Just one problem with what insty is writing:

This was a KNOCK raid,

Balko points out later on in the reason piece, that although the "knock" was pretty ritualized and ineffective, it was there.

Fortunately, where I'm sat, in Ireland (the Republic), the cops are not particularly militarized. You, in the US, and the Brits have real problems.

What was it Clinton was saying a few days back about the "Feeble minded" acting on dangerous rhetoric?

The rhetoric came from the likes of him, the Obarmamensch and Daddy and li'l Dubya Bush.

and the "Feeble minded" are, in this case...

Keith said...

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

a map of botched raids across the us