I don't think "nonviolent" is a good description of a lot of hard drug rings. They aren't being violent right at the moment, but if they see a cop standing outside the door, they very well might just shoot him.
No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
You mean like this guy with "an ounce or less of marijuana"?
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. They aren't being used for "hard drugs" they are being used for "any situation where we might be able to link to someone who uses drugs".
This seems so disconnected from my comment that I'm not even sure you responded to the right one. Either you mis-replied or you have mentally transformed me into a bizarre caricature of what people who don't completely agree with you must be like.
> It would be a non-violent crime, probably. Non-violent crimes shouldn't result in swat teams.
Where in here do you see 'hard drug ring'? Or 'hard drugs'?
You:
> I don't think "nonviolent" is a good description of a lot of hard drug rings. They aren't being violent right at the moment, but if they see a cop standing outside the door, they very well might just shoot him. No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.
> This seems so disconnected from my comment that I'm not even sure you responded to the right one. Either you mis-replied or you have mentally transformed me into a bizarre caricature of what people who don't completely agree with you must be like.
Funny, I thought that is what your comment was.
I was talking about no knock warrants on nonviolent crimes and you make the false claim I was talking about armed, hard drug criminal organizations. That somehow them being "overused" makes the problem "less real".
I never claimed the problem wasn't real either. I claimed they shouldn't be used in relation to non-violent crimes/criminals in general.
You asserted that crimes where the police might need to barge in without knocking in order to prevent destruction of evidence are most likely nonviolent crimes. In fact, that kind of situation is almost exclusively drug crime, and the drug world is a violent place.
As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
The problem is not that SWAT raids are victimizing an otherwise "probably non-violent" drug world. The problem is that many law-enforcement officers behave in a cowardly way, where the prioritize their well-being over that of the public, so they treat people who are not hardened drug lords as though they were — just in case. That is the big problem.
> You asserted that crimes where the police might need to barge in without knocking in order to prevent destruction of evidence are most likely nonviolent crimes. In fact, that kind of situation is almost exclusively drug crime, and the drug world is a violent place.
> As I said, the fact that no-knock SWAT teams are sent in indiscriminately is bad, but it doesn't mean that crimes where evidence can be flushed down the toilet are "a non-violent crime, probably."
Alcohol is more dangerous than all drug related crimes combined to LEO. Not just raids. anything.
Please provide statistical evidence that a drug arrest is more violent/dangerous than other arrests. Please also provide evidence that a large percentage of these arrest involve violent offenders.
And nothing you've said precludes what I said should happen [ search the premise when its unoccupied ].
You are demanding data to support the idea that drug rings are associated with violence. That demand does not suggest to me that this will lead to a productive conversation regardless of how I answer. So if you want to believe that associates of Mexican drug lords are all hippie antiwar activists, I guess I am not going to be the one to disabuse you of that notion.
This is true to some degree, though I think legalizing many drugs would still not take away a large portion of the associated criminality. People with bad coke or meth addictions just don't care very much who they hurt.
No-knock warrants are by and large a horrible thing and SWAT teams are drastically overused, but that doesn't make the problem they are meant to address any less real.