
Door-Busting Drug Raids Leave a Trail of Blood - gerbilly
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-entry-warrant-drug-raid.html
======
mnm1
No-knock raids kill police. They kill civilians. They kill animals and babies.
They are the worst, most dangerous way to serve a warrant, according to police
themselves. Yet these same police continue to use them because preventing
someone flushing their weed down the toilet is more important than killing a
baby in a crib. As long as our society accepts this justification, babies,
people of all kinds, and animals will be killed and property destroyed. Police
will get richer. Meanwhile, in WA, OR, CO, AK, etc. people go to the store and
buy their weed peacefully without incident in a nice, safe, comfortable
environment that is a tax boon to the states and better for all of society.

So the difference is just exactly how you want to make that extra money, and
who in society makes it. As a society we can choose to go with the status quo,
empowering police departments across the country while they shoot and kill
more and more innocent people to enrich themselves, or we can finally legalize
something that people are going to do anyway and use that money to fund our
schools and hospitals to better society. The sad part is that most people are
so closed-minded on the subject, they only see the first option. Then they get
mad when babies get killed when that's a direct result of a policy they
supported and voted for.

~~~
in_cahoots
I don't think this is about weed. It's about a structure that's set up with
all the wrong incentives. Police departments get to seize assets related to
drug offenses with no due process. Departments are being flooded with money to
buy military resources, with the provision that they use them within the year.
And once they have the resources there's a whole industry of ex-military
businesses designed to train departments in SWAT-like techniques.

When your local police department trains on equipment meant for executing
urban warfare, is it any wonder that the wars come to our cities?

~~~
mnm1
Oh, without a doubt weed is just an excuse to feed the rubes. I should've been
more clear. I agree with your thoughts on armaments buildup in police
departments. It's no wonder at all.

~~~
bradbatt
Radley Balko's book "Rise of the Warrior Cop" goes into these issues in depth.
He looks at the history of how the war on drugs, among other things, has
contributed to the rise in military equipment and tactics being used at the
local level.

There are a shocking number of no-knock raids which have resulted in death of
not only officers and some offenders, but innocent people who's homes were
raided based on wrong information and in some cases the police literally
getting the address wrong.

[http://amzn.to/2mlNWxj](http://amzn.to/2mlNWxj)

------
koenigdavidmj
These need to be banned. No, I don't want to hear your pet exception. Loss of
evidence isn't enough to justify the state murdering people.

~~~
jMyles
> These need to be banned.

It seems unlikely that the state will voluntarily cease this activity, as it
achieves the quintessential goal of the state of instilling fear and creating
the impression that the state lives in a legal and moral framework divorced
from and above the common law.

In libertarian circles, we often hear people advocate responding with violent
self-defense. While this is perhaps more likely, if done with frequently and
vigor, to result in meaningful change, it also continues to utilize a "might-
makes-right" approach to political change, which I find even more abhorrent
than the legislative process.

So how do we achieve this ban peacefully?

~~~
Analemma_
One way might be to make the money for these settlements come partially or
entirely from police union treasuries. Right now cops don't give a shit if
someone is awarded millions in a wrongful death suit because, hey, it's not
like they're paying for it-- that cost is all on the taxpayer. If it actually
hit them in the wallet they might be a little more careful.

~~~
biofox
Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and
be required to have malpractice insurance. Premiums could be based on their
prior conduct. Gross misconduct would result in them losing their right to
work in law enforcement. I imagine that would solve the problem.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Perhaps police should be licensed like professionals (doctors / lawyers) and
> be required to have malpractice insurance.

Or just not covered by a near-blanket immunity from liability. If they were
exposed to personal liability, you wouldn't need to expressly require
liability insurance, they'd see the need quickly. And insurers would probably
take care of the equivalence of licensing requirements by the factors that
controlled insurance pricing.

~~~
wahern
Police officers are exposed to personal liability more often than you'd think.
But police unions almost universally require that the municipality indemnify
or otherwise insure their officers for any personal liability.

It's similar to D&O (director and officer) insurance that every corporation
carries. Directors are exposed to substantial personal liability from
stockholder suits, but all that cost is just passed through to the
corporations.

For many, many reasons I don't think professional liability insurance is a
good comparison. Suffice is to say that being a cop is not a traditional
professional occupation. The incentives just don't line up the same way. It's
like arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers personally
liable for their bugs. There's some superficial logic to it, but only when you
ignore the reality of the labor market and how it's structured.

~~~
jMyles
You've made a somewhat strange comparison:

> [advocating that police officers be personally liable for their conduct is
> like] arguing we could make the internet safer by making programmers
> personally liable for their bugs.

What I like about this comparison: It treats police brutality as a systemic
civic problem, like bugs in software that lead to global insecurity on the
internet. Police brutality, like internet fragility, is a problem that
threatens (at least nearly) everyone. Also similar is that people are
reluctant to recognize the peripheral damage - police brutality decreases the
quality of government and capacity for civic engagement for everyone, not just
the victims.

Things I don't like about this comparison: The idea of personal liability for
programmers because bugs because internet insecurity is an incredible
abstraction. Compared to, for example, police officers who literally break
down people's doors and shoot them, it's pretty hard to see the similarity in
terms of the connection. Also: a company that decides to deploy a product that
contains bugs has an opportunity to audit the software in order to prevent
that. There's really no similarity in that respect.

These cops know better - nobody thinks that breaking down someone's door in
the middle of the night and terrorizing their family is proper behavior for an
adult in a free society. But they do it anyway. This is malicious, horrific
conduct and it's a stretch to say that liability is improper for the
perpetrators.

------
jMyles
> Innocents have died in attacks on wrong addresses, including a 7-year-old
> girl in Detroit, and collaterally as the police pursued other residents,
> among them a 68-year-old grandfather in Framingham, Mass. Stray bullets have
> whizzed through neighboring homes, and in dozens of instances the victims of
> police gunfire have included the family dog.

I think about this almost daily. Sometimes I seriously have trouble falling
asleep because I'm afraid that the next wrong door will be mine.

Am I the only one?

~~~
Nadya
_> I think about this almost daily. Sometimes I seriously have trouble falling
asleep because I'm afraid that the next wrong door will be mine.

>Am I the only one?_

No, but it isn't a very rational fear. Do you have trouble sleeping because
you're scared of driving your car? How about choking on your food when you
eat? When was the last time you tested your Carbon Monoxide detector? Ever
plug anything into an electric outlet? How long each day are you staying
seated?

There are a hundred mundane things you likely do daily - each of them coming
with a risk of death.

Most people don't factor the risks of the more mundane things they do and they
actively overestimate the risks of other, less mundane events.

~~~
emn13
That depends on your definition of rational. Clearly, it's not the greatest
risk, not even remotely close to that. But there are a lot of interesting
cognitive biases at play here, and some of _those_ exist for a reason.

For instance: it doesn't actually matter which risk is greatest; it's rational
to fear that which is most avoidable. After all, that's where your attention
is best spent. And similarly, we're social creatures and benefit from that
hugely: and it's rational to spend attention not just on risks that you
personally can avoid, but on those you can avoid _with_ your community. And
it's rational to spend extra attention to avoid in particular those risks
which are exploitable by competitors: i.e. violence. After all, those risks
(unlike "natural" risks) have a tendency to snowball. And then of course you
have the fact that this kind of extreme violence poses risks to the community
at large by undermining the trust a community needs to exist in the first
place.

Humanity may well be one of the most peaceful of comparable species (in terms
of probability of serious injury by others of the same species), but part of
that may plausibly be precisely _because_ we're particularly sensitive to
violent abuse. Is that irrational if it grants such huge benefits? If it is,
is any empathy rational?

In any case; I don't think the analysis can be quite as simple as risks ranked
by probability of dying.

At minimum, pointing out irrationality doesn't necessarily help much to
alleviate the fear.

~~~
Nadya
_> At minimum, pointing out irrationality doesn't necessarily help much to
alleviate the fear._

The only way to get over an emotional fear is to recognize that the emotional
fear is at odds with reality. This is ignoring psychological fears of which
there may be nothing you can do. For psychological fears I am referring to
very specific phobias that may or may not be the result of a traumatic
experience.

People scared of clowns usually had a bad experience as a child. My uncle
swapped my Barney VHS with Stephen King's IT. For a long time I was scared of
clowns. But it just isn't _rational_ for me to be scared of clowns and I
eventually got over that phobia.

Some people are terrified of the color yellow. There's no rhyme or reason -
they just are. I'm sure there are various treatments ("exposure" seems to be a
common one, similar to PTSD treatments) but some people will just have to live
with their phobias playing a large and disruptive part of their lives.

Being so terrified of police, terrorists, people throwing pennies off of
buildings, etc. are simply things I cannot empathize with. If I was worried
about every freak accident in life I'd never leave my house (but what if a
meteorite struck my house? [0])

[0]
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russi...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-
meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/)

~~~
emn13
You're missing the key point of my message.

It's _not_ rational to expect fear to be an unbiased estimator of risk. If you
regard fear as a motivation, then it would be _irrational_ to ignore factors
other than risk.

And that means that merely stating that things are not very risky is not a
valid basis for concluding that it is irrational to fear them.

------
cbanek
This is why I want to move out into the desert, somewhere far out, where I can
see anyone coming for miles. Sadly, cops do whatever they want in America,
because Americans are brainwashed to think everyone is a criminal, or if the
cops are involved, they were somehow asking for it.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Rather than run away from the problem let's get together and fix it for
everyone.

~~~
cbanek
While this is a nice sentiment, I'd be happy to hear any real productive
advice you might have. I've been fighting this and the war on drugs for a
while. As time goes on, sadly I feel like we're losing more ground than we're
gaining.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Well basically anything which says "let's just give up" is just not helpful.
There has been progress.

~~~
cbanek
I'm not saying move out of the US. I'm saying I'd like more warning when
anyone sneaks up on me. Who's giving up?

------
pge
Never forget that the police work for elected officials that you vote for and
put in office. The best way to hold them accountable is at the voting booth
(or better yet, run for office yourself).

~~~
jpindar
If you have an example of a politician who is against this kind of thing,
please tell us. Seriously, I'd like to see how they describe their position.

