From a public policy point of view armed federals are more worrisome than local swat teams. Less democratic checks & balances and, as far as I can tell, zero accountability.

My son is a member of the local SWAT team. I want him heavily armed, covered in what may look menacing but is protective gear when they go in where someone is holed up with a gun, bust a meth lab, etc. He's been first through the door and that's a little scary. Mitch, you want the right to carry a weapon, I should imagine that anyone involved in any way in law enforcement should be able to also..."nearly 80,000 non-military federal employees now carry guns for some reason or another". The possibility that sometime in the future we'll need our weapons for protection against some federal employees does give one pause however...

Also, it must not happen very often that they bust in on the wrong "folks". It's like people decrying descipline in the schools the way it used to be...visits to the principal where you were spanked or otherwise "corporally punished". They bring up how some kid didn't even do it and got spanked...unfair...Well, bullcrap. I grew up in a tough town in Colorado and those that got punished had it coming and if they hadn't done it that particular time, they had done it and not got caught the day before. I always noticed if you did your work, kept a low profile (and by that I don't mean cower and slink around)...just plain behaved, you weren't going to get hauled off to be "brutalized" by the principal. Same (for the most part) with being busted by the law.

The "dozens" of needless deaths might be the same numbers as the "millions" without health insurance. But maybe not...I don't know for sure, but I suspect these kind of statistics and reports.

The main reason for all the gear is to protect the officers. The tactics are used to quickly subdue the suspects to PREVENT further violence.

Given the list of only 293 bad raids over 20 years. When 40,000 raids/year x 20 years = 800,000 raids yeilds a bad raid percentage of .000036625. Hardly seems like a problem even if the list of bad raids was 10 times larger. Of course we as a society must continue to monitor the use of these activities and continue to ensure that the practice does not slide to the abusive side.

Next time you see and officer approach a car that has been pulled over watch where the officer stands and places his gun hand. Precaution is the name of the game for all suspects regardless of the severity of the offense. Since many officers are killed each year by so called minor offenders. (I.E. the St. Paul officer killed checking on a guy sleeping in his car a decade or so ago).

Dave

Colleen and Dave should go back and read the material you mention. No one is saying that SWAT team members dont have dangerous jobs. No on is saying that SWAT team members shouldnt be wear protective gear. What we are saying is that SWAT shouldnt be used to serve traffic warrants. To arrest non-violent offenders. To bust up neighborhood card games. And yes, to conduct no-knock raids on the wrong address. Just to have the policy of a no-knock raid is asking for someone to get killed. I understand the need to protect the evidence. I understand the need to overwhelm the bad guys before they can start throwing shots. I do not understand the sloppy investigations that lead to these wrong addresses. Even to have 40,000 SWAT raids a year should throw out a red flag. All police jobs are dangerous. But we have a professional police force, not a para-military occupational force, which is pretty much what SWAT is (only not occupational, at least not yet)

One aspect of this that seems to be left out is that the black BDU's are a lot more comfortable for the officers than traditional uniforms. Most police uniforms are wool blends. Yesterday it was 107 here and a lot of cops were wearing wool! Stupid!

Maybe if they let the non-SWAT guys were SWAT uniforms there wouldn't be as much appeal to it. Yeah, it is a small thing, but those small things add up.

Hey, if you black helicopter types are worried about overweening federal law enforcement, you may wanna give a second thought to that Giuliani thread. Just saying.

But we all know you right-wingers aren't really serious about Rudy.

>My son is a member of the local SWAT team.

Angry, paranoid and well armed. I'm predicting Scary Colleen as the December cover story in Armed Standoff magazine.