Stupid SWAT Stories

Good ol' Radley has a few here, along with a trenchant observation:

This sort of case also emphasis [sic] the inherent contradiction in the way police justify these raids. You'll notice in the article that the police say they conducted the no-knock, middle-of-the-night raid to catch the suspect and his family off-guard. They then turn around and say the woman who fired the gun should have known they were police officers (she's in jail on attempted capital murder charges). You can't have it both ways. You can't say nighttime SWAT raids are necessary to catch people unaware while they're sleeping, then say they "should have known" that the men invading their homes were police.

And as his first example in the link demonstrates, just living within a mile or so of a drug-dealer is "cause" for some SWAT raids by nincompoop cop-shops.

If you give the police more and more power, you better have better-and-better cops.