The Economist comes up with quite the nugget here:
Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies, estimates that SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year. Some cities use them for routine patrols in high-crime areas. Baltimore and Dallas have used them to break up poker games. In 2010 New Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence”.Plenty more to chew on in the whole Economist article.
Hey Doug;
ReplyDeleteI have commented about the militarization of the police, it is soo easy to run the SWAT team out for a regular call and that is when accidents happen, family pet gets shot among other things and then they throw around the word "Officer safety" as an excuse to cover up a multitudes of right violations.