On the Shiflett situation

Instapundit had a link to this story, in which the sheriff now says something about why he considered Shiflett a threat calling for using a tac team, including saying that officers went to the door and he refused to talk to them. Then, through Codrea I found this, which- surprise!- has a somewhat different story.

Three things make it hard for me to simply accept the official line from the sheriff & company. First is how it's changed from 'there were reasons, but I can't tell you any right now', to the current for using the team. Second, that it fits into the "We gave you an order, peasant!" attitude of far too many people in positions of authority- here the paramedics, the 'human services' people and the Sheriff's Office, including
Jim Bradford, a court clerk in Garfield County, said it was a juvenile matter and he could not comment on any aspect of the case, and he declined to allow WND to leave a message for Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak, who signed the order. I really like that 'declined to ALLOW' part, don't you?
Third, that there are so many cases over the last few years of tac teams being used when there's no damn need for them. When it's happened a bunch of times before, you tend to get kind of cynical about the "We had to do it for officer safety" line.

We'll see how this shakes out in the end. Personally I still hope for the officials involved to be sued, although the sheriff's personnel are probably protected: tac teams personnel have killed people, both accidentally and unnecessarily- not counting property damage and people being terrified and sometimes abused- and gotten off the hook. "They were following procedures" and such seems to cover a whole range of sins.

I have two final thoughts for now:
I have lost a lot of my trust in law enforcement over the last few years, between abuse of authority, abuse of tac teams, the FBI sending people to prison to protect informants, ATF lying in court and faking tests and doing other things(Pistolero reminded me of this), the whole damn range, with them so many times getting away with it with little or no penalty.
Second is, I really, Really hate having to write the first.