Posted on 10/13/2013 11:42:43 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
The idea that every town must have a police SWAT team is relatively new. While just a handful of big cities had SWAT teams 30 years ago, now 80 percent of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 have them.
Now there is one fewer. Quietly and with no public debate, Framingham’s SWAT team has been disbanded. Chief Steven Carl gave the order as he and the SWAT commander left the department for other jobs.
Carl told me the disbanding of the SWAT team wasn’t just something he did on the way out the door. Two years ago he told the Stamps Commission he’d have to disband the unit if the team commander, Deputy Chief Craig Davis, ever left the force.
That civilian commission had been convened by Carl to review the Framingham SWAT team’s worst night, when a team member accidentally shot and killed Eurie Stamps Sr., 68, as he lay face down on the floor of his home.
The SWAT team had been serving a search warrant in a routine drug case and they’d given the Stamps home the full SWAT treatment: A midnight raid complete with battering rams, flash-bomb grenades, and 23 heavily armed officers, who caught Stamps in his pajamas. Stamps cooperated, and there were no drugs or guns found in the house, but he was killed by an officer who said he stumbled and his weapon fired by accident.
Stamps left a large family grieving, a minority community upset and Framingham facing a potentially expensive wrongful death suit.
Carl’s commission recommended a smaller SWAT team with more time devoted to training. The incident strengthened the chief’s opinion that if Davis left the department, there would be no one with the training, skills and responsibility required to supervise the unit. It would take five to ten years to train someone else to match Davis’ qualifications, Carl said.
There’s also the expense. Framingham SWAT team members must train at least 40 hours a year plus 16 hours a month. With 12 to 14 members on the team, that amounts to more than 3,000 officer hours a year in training, much of it charged as overtime, either by the SWAT officers or others brought in to fill their shifts.
Since the situations for which SWAT teams are trained – hostage-takings, armed and barricaded subjects, snipers, etc. – are so rare in a town like Framingham, Carl said, “you’re paying a lot for an insurance policy.”
Plus I don't buy accident. There is only one side of the story that we'll ever hear. To kill someone with impunity is why all to many police join up.
boys with matches = formerly beat up boys with MACHINE GUNS and a badge.
Both are very bad ideas and we need to see much, much more of this.
These are bored action junkies who need to work out their problems in some OTHER, less expensive way.
Besides, if they get in a bind they can always request the Dept. of Education, EPA, National Park Service, Social Security, Dept. of Agriculture, etc. SWAT team for support. They will be there kicking down doors, rousting old women and men, shooting dogs, etc. before you can get a no knock search warrant in their hands .... of course it might not be the right address but they will be as efficient as hell.
If you support the war on drugs, then you support these raids.
If you support the war on drugs, then you support these raids.
It has to do with organization and hierarchy. Chiefs of police are hired, Sheriffs are elected.
Other than with their city council, police departments are fairly autonomous within states, which is why it is doubly disturbing for them to have a direct relationship with the federal government. This should be forbidden.
Sheriffs have a relationship both with their county supervisors, and with the state. They are the Common Law head of the Posse Comitatus (not to be confused with the federal Posse Comitatus Act), which means they can deputize any adults to carry out the law, or respond to a “Hue and Cry” against criminals.
Constitutionally, it gets very interesting. Over the years, the US Supreme Court has decided that the US congress is superior to state legislatures, and that federal judges are superior to state judges. But they have never found that the president is superior to a state governor.
This means that if they are at loggerheads, the only way a POTUS can force his will on a governor is by sending in the US Army (the most recent example being Eisenhower’s use of the 101st Airborne Division to force integration into the Little Rock High School, against governor Orval Faubus, Bill Clinton’s mentor.) (Likewise, W. Bush could not send in relief after hurricane Katrina, because the governor of Louisiana would not give him permission to do so.)
I use this as background, to point out that the POTUS is to a state governor, as a state governor is to a county Sheriff.
On the surface it sounds a bit confusing, I’ll agree, but in that there are, at times, legitimate applications for the use of a SWAT team, properly it should be regulated by the state, and operated at the county level. Cities are often too irresponsible, and it could take the state police too long to respond.
Key phrase.
Nailed it.
Thanks, and that’s coming from a former drug warrior.
SWAT is the goal of State Dept Pub 7277, Freedom From War.
Internal paramilitary forces rise to deal with intra-country issues.
Actual military forces go more and more under world organization controls.
Exactly what’s been going on since this document was created.
BTTT
Dark uniforms against a light-colored background. Framed by a narrow, illuminated hallway with two guys standing in a well-lit doorway. An upright posture fine for shopping the aisles of Wallyworld, and for catching bullets.
I know this is a classic image from the movies and TV, and it was probably thrown together in just a few minutes. I know I'm just a po' dumb "civilian" (those guys are civilians too), but I've spent more time in my military and civilian life in shoot houses and simulations than they have. Including live fire against "shoot-no-shoot" targets in low light.
America now has a few million ex-door kickers who learned on the mean streets of Iraq, and the mud villages of Afghanistan. An Army or Marine unit that performed like they did would be doing various amounts of time at hard labor at Levenworth or Portsmouth. All I got out of that picture was a gigantic facepalm about how NOT to publicize your "trained, experienced" SWAT team so it leaves a warm, fuzzy feeling with the taxpayers.
Many of them aren’t what they were in the past. In at least some jurisdictions, their titles (”officer,” “sergeant,” etc.) and training are more like those of municipals. The voters tend to re-elect them rather automatically and enjoy resulting chaos. Some even repeatedly and conspicuously have as election opponents, dramatic, extreme psycho-lefties and liberaltarians without any reasonable alternatives.
Thank you for your insight, it is most helpful.
Not in urban counties, they’re essentially appointees who run for office. That’s how it is here in Cook County aka Crook County.
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