I missed that.

That's pretty fucking stupid.

That matrix is like the Zero Tolerance Rules at Schools.........

Little Johnny gets suspended for for making a hand pistol........

and going pew, pew, pew...............

Reason number 101 why I buy all my firearms face to face and I will NEVER register any of them.  Somewhere down the line if that makes me a felon then I guess we will cross that bridge then.  

Not blaming you doc.

I think Matrix'x are a good idea.

You're utterly missing the point.  It's not the equipment or personnel people don't like, it is the tactics.  It used to be in this country that unless you were Bonnie & Clyde, you generally had an opportunity to surrender peacefully.  Now, SWAT immediately resorts to violent, forced entries.  That's the objectionable part.  



 

WAT?
you know the BG's inside can surrender right? they dont HAVE to start shooting cops.

done what?

So you think these guys were "tearing ass around" the house in this incident to flush the objects of the search warrant?  A 40+ inch television, cell phones and DVDs?  

Keep in mind that this was not, at least ostensibly, a drug warrant.   (That's unless the process of the credit card going from a former officer's wife, to the guy named as CI in the warrant, to the dirt bags was just a means by which the officers were trying to go after a drug house when they didn't have drug evidence....).  

Its easy to say after the fact, oh, in this case these guys didn't voluntarily answer the door.     But all these K&A warrants served with 1 or 2 seconds between knock and the door coming in are bullshit.   No one I know could get to the door in that short a period of time.   And if they busted ass to try and run down the fucking stairs or run to the door and open it "right away" -- you're going to hear people "tearing ass" and knock the door down anyway.

According to my local PD they just kick the report up to feds.  Doesn't sound like my local PD think it's significant.

Of course they can, but it's rather disingenuous to suggest they would have gone this far if it had happened to someone that didn't have any connections to the PD.

Again:

They were there with a search warrant.  Under the constitutional requirements, that document had to have a listing of the places to be searched and the things to be seized.   Go take a moment.   Read the warrant here.   Take your time.  Look at that list of things they were after.  No drugs.    Its over at the Des Moines Register.    Not a bit, tittle or wink of any drug information in the warrant as things to be seized.   Just a shit load of things that can't be flushed down a toilet..  

Under your rationale, the police can knock on my door seeking donations for the Fraternal Order and if they hear my kids hauling ass up or down the stairs, they suddenly can bust my door in and turn it into a drug search.  The FOP donation seekers, however, would have no more right to be at my house looking for drugs or the furtive disposal of drugs than the police in the incident in this OP did.  Their warrant was a stolen property warrant.  

I'd bet something approaching 100% of search warrants served during waking hours involve situations where officers can articulate that they hear people scrambling around the house.  Hell, I think that about 100% of the time when ANYONE knocks any my house door, there's scrambling noises... as the nosy kids haul ass up or down the stairs to see if their friends have come calling.  

Suggesting that hearing activity inside is grounds to go in hot is just one more reason Americans have to appreciate the fact that pretty much all warrant services are spring loaded toward being dynamic actions these days.   Then you add the fact that ANY gun ownership triggers dynamic action, etc., and it gets pretty funky.  

This x 87

I cannot fathom a reasonable explanation for the CRIMINAL destruction. Unless one of the stolen items thought be in the house was a security camera......

remember, you have to maintain the element of surprise after you knock in the door.

officer safety is paramount

 

WTF?

Knock and announce has become a crock ever since the Courts said you could do knock, knock, smash.  Little different from a no knock now.  The fundamental problem is that the police have seemed to develop a mentality that places officer safety at the expense of public safety.  That is not how it is supposed to work in a free society and it is time to reign in the excess.  SWAT should be limited to circumstances were you are fairly certain there is going to be a gunfight or similar public safety situation.  The risk that he might flush a bag of weed or kill a flash drive needs to stop being an excuse for doing violence upon a citizen without due process.    



 

How do you know it is the police when someone in a hockey mask kicks down your door?



 

Its hard to change your report when you behavior is filmed.

because police dont wear hockey masks?
when the police kick down your door they are wearing placards on the front and back
with a giant "POLICE". oh, and they are also shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!"

Ahem.   Isn't fortification another basis for dynamic entry in your little matrix up there?  

Here's the part I don't think you're getting.

We live in a world now where the most outrageous abuses of power have occurred.  You have the IRS breaking its own rules to go after conservatives, and no one has been held to account.   You have countless other abuses.

It used to be that a typical gun owner would sit around and feel like, "well, ok, I don't do anything illegal, there are no drugs here, my guns are all of legal province and configuration, I pay my taxes, I go to church, I'm a good law abiding American and so I don't worry about the police showing up at my house for investigatory purposes."

That thinking is no longer valid.   Any of us who donated to Tea Party groups, who have been vocal in gun rights battles, who belong to the wrong internet message boards, etc., are now TARGETS of an unfriendly and outrageously corrupt government.   With that in mind, we have to accept the possibility the police will be brought to our doorstep for bullshit reasons, just like innocent Americans went through IRS hell because of their Tea Party affiliation.   And so we look at all these "justifications" for the police going in with violent force, into our homes with our family and kids, and we have some serous problems with the utter bullshit that K&A has become, and the hair trigger and strong bias toward dynamic entry presented by the threat matrices used by the departments.

If you want to treat any scrambling around inside any home as occupants taking up a defensive position or to destroy evidence, and thus, to immediately blow the door and go in guns drawn, it seems concerning.  (Again, you should hear my kids anytime the doorbell rings as they haul ass to see if its their friends -- and it usually is)

If you want to treat anti-crime bars on the windows and strong locks or door jamb reinforcements (the sort of thing you yourself advocate above) as "fortification" and another checkmark in favor of going in hot, that seems concerning.

If you want to treat simple ownership of guns, including grandpa's 30-30 -- in the complete absence of any history of any occupant of violent conduct with a weapon, brandishing, etc., -- as grounds to go in hot, that's concerning.  

If you want to take A's lawful ownership of a gun and combine it with B's historical (non-gun) assault arrest from over a decade ago (about which the other guy may not even be aware), and add those up to = danger lets go in hot, that's concerning.

If you want to show up with a warrant to locate a 42 inch TV, a warrant for occupants you know are not the owners of the home, and yet on a hair trigger basis, start knocking down the doors because "rushing about" activity inside may mean some other unknown, unspecified in the warrant, criminality or evidence destruction may be at hand, then that's concerning.  

For me, this is really the concern.   Whereas I never had any worry about bullshit accusations or whatever bringing the police to my house without basis, we don't live in that sort of country anymore.   If the federal government's tax collection apparatus can set out to destroy lives because of political viewpoint, without consequences to any of apparatchiks at hand, then you're damn right that I want the police to be a little more deep thinking in terms of how they bring force and violence to bear.

You can't have it both ways.  The point of SWAT is to take people down before they can process what is going on.  You can't deliberately use such tactics then turn around and say that the objects of said tactics have enough reaction time to be able to realize that it actually is the police and surrender peacefully.  Anyone can yell "police" and anyone can buy gear that looks like SWAT crap.  30 seconds on Google produced this.



http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=POLICE+Windbreaker+raid+jacket



 

The hypocrisy abounds.  



Police: "OMG.  This one time a military vet resisted us.  From now on we always use SWAT on vets.  Officer safety."

Citizen: "But what about fake raids?  They've happened."

Police: "They are rare, you don't have to worry about that."



Officer safety has become the only concern.  Public safety is apparently not even a consideration anymore.







 

I don't think you're a door kicking statist.  

I think you're in a different tribe than I am.  The tribe of "enforcers" with state privilege and prerogative.  Your mindset focuses on keeping police safe.  In every scenario where officers interact with non-officers, you want the scale balanced so if someone is exposed to mortal peril, its not the officers.   Your point of view is of the officers and of the worst case scenario for them.   In taking that mindset you treat mere civilians who might get thrust into the moral coil by hyper-amped police as acceptable losses.

I don't.   I'm a member of the tribe of unwashed civilians.   I don't want officers to go naked and unarmed into drug dens, OK.  I want them to take reasonable steps to be safe.    But I also don't want officers who appear at my doorstep on the basis of some bullshit accusation (which has perhaps come to them through the machinations of someone trying to squash me as a political opponent) to come blowing into my house because when they knock on the door, they hear my kids trampling down the steps with hurry and ruckus thinking its their friends next door showing up for an afternoon of XBOX.    I'm sure if officers blow into my house on the basis of a bullshit accusation and kill the 10 year old because he runs downstairs with a scary xbox controller in his hand, all the right things will be said in the reports.   "reasonable belief," and "sounds of scurrying and furtive activity," and "officer safety," and all that shit.   And when they find no evidence of criminality there will be apologies and justifications, and some officer friendly bureaucrat will find the death while tragic did not occur because of any violation of policies, because after all officer safety like a motherfucker .   But that doesn't make it right.

Its all where the lines get drawn.   At some point, people who sign up for a life as police officers have to accept SOME heightened risk of harm, and not transfer that risk to the civilian side of the equation in every possible circumstance.

good load the herpaderp has gone clear off the deep end.

the threat matrix is for activating a SWAT team to serve the warrant. not for dynamic entry.
the known threats will be used to determine the safest method to execute the warrant yes, but there is no
defacto "john was in the military, we're gonna no know his ass at 2 AM and come in guns blazing!"

sorry no, it doesnt take much time to hear people shouting "police"
and if you are in a house full of criminals doing criminal stuff, you should expect the people dressed like
cops kicking in your door shouting "POLICE" to be cops.
yes the point of a quick entry is to get in before they can form a plan to counter you.
no you do not get to start shooting at uniformed police officers who are shouting they are police because
you havnt seen their W2's

What do you do if they turn out not to be police?



 

The unwritten expectation is that no matter what, defending your home is perilous.   Lay down your weapons and assume the prone position.  If its the police and we don't, or if its NOT the police and we do... well, either way....  we die.

Well done sir, well done.



 

Sure thing kids, sure thing

First things first, I am not shooting anyone unless I have a 100% positive ID, even if it results in me being injured or killed. So moving on, if someone has done absolutely nothing wrong and has NO reason to assume the police would be kicking down their door the first thing that pops in to their mind (or at least my mind) is "BADGUYS WITH A FAKE RAID". not "police got a BS warrant or hit the wrong house". It is much more logical in my mind that criminals are kicking down my door to steal my stuff rather than police got a baseless, rubber stamped warrant or meant to hit the crack house on 1234 Any st. but actually hit my house at 1234 Any rd. on the other side of town.