Free Republic

Steve Forrest, who starred as Lt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson on the 1970s ABC action series S.W.A.T., died peacefully surrounded by family on May 18 in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 87. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Forrest frequently was cast as a leading man or “heavy.” An aficionado of the American Western, he delighted in roles that glorified the genre, including guest-starring appearances on such television classics as The Virginian, Bonanza and Gunsmoke. But it was his role as the hard-hitting yet warmhearted Harrelson on the Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg-produced S.W.A.T. that most endeared Forrest to...

Driving in the early morning hours to his job at a metal shop in Buda, Miguel Montanez at first thought the approaching lights were a school bus or a tow truck. But Montanez says it was a Hays County SWAT truck that rammed his car head-on. As they collided, another police vehicle pinned him from behind, he says. He heard a shot. “I saw my windshield crack, and I ducked down as low as possible,” Montanez said. “I really thought I was going to die.” Seconds later, he says, three deputies were pointing assault rifles at him. “That’s when I...

The YouTube channel Patriot News Organization on Thursday uploaded a training video from the Department of Homeland Security that depicts a fake news broadcast about a police SWAT team raiding an American house and arresting "extremist" members of a “local militia group” for possession of illegal firearms and planning to commit terrorist attacks. “Very disturbing video straight from DHS website - they use it to help train all of the deputized agencies during a crisis, even hospital administrators, media faces, everything and everyone that would be involved in such an event,” reads the Patriot News Organization’s description of the video....

The terrorist attack in Boston and ensuing events in Watertown had everyone on edge, but shocking new home video from Massachusetts show law enforcement officers trampling over the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution – which guarantees “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures… and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” A video recently uploaded to YouTube by residents whose home was searched...

How is it at all legal for the police to have coerced people from their homes during the house to house search that was conducted in Watertown MA last week? By 'coerced', I mean being told to leave their residence by police SWAT teams. When you have 10 police pointing rifles at you, yelling at your to get out of your house, I'd consider that coersion. These people were removed from their homes and forced to go someplace else. It appears that they were not 'allowed' back into their homes for hours. How is that possible in America? Were homeowners...

(CN) - San Diego County and a sheriff's detective might be liable for using excessive force and conspiring against a deputy's ex-girlfriend with a "SWAT-like" raid of her home, the 9th Circuit ruled Tuesday. The federal appeals panel in Pasadena, Calif., revived Michelle Cameron's excessive force and conspiracy claims against San Diego County and Sheriff's Detective Michelle Craig. Cameron, a yoga instructor, started dating one of her students, Sheriff's Deputy David Buether, in 2004. The two eventually moved in together and had two children. Their relationship soured in 2008, when Cameron learned that Buether was sleeping with other women, according...

A Leawood couple says heavily armed Johnson County deputies barged into their home last year, turning it upside down and detaining them and their children for more than two hours in a fruitless search for marijuana. “This is how we were awakened: banging, pounding, screaming,” the mother, Adlynn Harte, said Friday. “My husband opened the door right before the battering ram was set to take it out.” The father allegedly was forced to lie shirtless on the foyer while a deputy with an assault rifle stood over him. The children, a 7-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy, reportedly came out of...

Albany Chelsey Morales said police confined her to an apartment. Thurston Gross said police threatened to arrest him for trespassing as he tried to get to his own home. What happened at Ida J. Yarbrough Homes Thursday during a police training exercise was unacceptable, said residents and community advocates at a lively meeting of the Arbor Hill Neighborhood Association on Monday night at the Arbor Hill/West Hill Library. Albany Police Department's SWAT team conducted a hostage rescue drill in a vacant apartment at the public housing complex, just a few yards away from occupied homes.

s I posted earlier, the 17-year-old Houston resident was shot to death Tuesday by a police SWAT team during a drug raid on his family's home. It's increasingly looking like yet another paramilitary drug raid gone horribly wrong. The father of a 17-year-old killed by a police officer who was looking for drugs at his home said the shooting was unprovoked. [...] The elder Castillo said his son was awakened by the pleas of his 20-year-old sister, Ashley. When the younger Castillo turned toward Falks, he said, the officer shot him in the face. "My son heard her say, 'Don't...

New York – -(Ammoland.com)- A SWAT team in upstate New York is being mocked as an example of the difference between military and police training after an officer was captured peering through a backwards Eotech sight on his combat rifle. As users on Reddit were quick to point out when the image was 1st posted, the reverse sight makes it effectively useless. Users mocked the SWAT officers training and some went so far as to question the motives of some of the men serving in local law enforcement. The officer is using a ‘military style’ assault weapon with a close...

Thomas Torres, age 54, was the target of a Connecticut State Police SWAT raid shortly before Christmas two years ago. The Spanish-speaking, subsidized housing resident of New Haven was living in a building infested with drug dealers and prostitutes. He kept his door closed unless given a damn good reason to do otherwise. He didn’t have the drugs the police were looking for and told them so, repeatedly, despite the language barrier, after the raiding party knocked down his door. What followed was the trashing of his apartment and a physical altercation between the unarmed middle-aged man on disability and...

A SWAT team in upstate New York is being mocked as an example of the difference between military and police training after an officer was captured peering through a backwards sight on his combat rifle. As users on the military Reddit were quick to point out when the image was posted, the reverse sight makes it effectively useless. Users mocked the SWAT officers training and some went so far as to question the motives of some of the men serving in local law enforcement.

Tough guy Clint Eastwood has joined the ranks of Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus and many other celebs as the latest victim of a prank known as “swatting.” A law enforcement source told TMZ that a 911 call sent multiple units rushing to Eastwood’s Los Angeles home this week. The prank call reported that multiple males armed with assault weapons were inside the actor’s home and people had been shot.

February 11, 2013 And Your Little Dog, Too By Deroy Murdock As Washington politicians aim to restrict the Second Amendment, they should look in the mirror. The time to control government’s guns is now. Overarmed federal officials increasingly employ military tactics as a first resort in routine law enforcement. From food-safety cases to mundane financial matters, battle-ready public employees are turning America into the United States of SWAT.FBI agents and U.S. marshals understandably are well fortified, given their frequent run-ins with ruthless bad guys. However — as my old friend and fellow columnist Quin Hillyer notes — armed officers, if...

A Pasco County couple made headlines this week after they say a SWAT team wrongfully busted into their home. But now, the sheriff's office is speaking out. Carl and Juanita Stark were sitting at their Moon Lake home Tuesday night, when they say they got the fright of their lives. "I heard the window break, the door busted open and there was a big flash and a bang," said Carl. "It scared me to death. I thought somebody had broke into the house," said Juanita. "And I thought oh Lord, they're going to kill us all." But it wasn't a...

Thursday, January 31, 2013 "Gun Violence": The "National Conversation" We Won't Have Victim of state-inflicted gun violence: Jose Guerena, Jr. after seeing the dead body of his father. Gabrielle Giffords, the “surprise witness” at the January 30 Senate hearing on gun violence, was among thirteen people attacked by a deranged gunman in the parking lot of a Safeway in Tucson two years ago. Vanessa Guerena, another Tucson resident whose husband was murdered in an act of gun-related criminal violence in their living room about four months later, was not given an opportunity to address the Senate panel. That’s because her...

Last week The Washington Post reported that Sal Culosi's parents have reached a $2 million settlement with Fairfax County, Virginia, police Detective Deval Bullock, who shot and killed the 38-year-old optometrist during a January 2006 SWAT raid on his home. The unusual settlement reflects the outrageous facts of this case, in which an unarmed man suspected of nothing more than betting on sports was recklessly gunned down during an unnecessarily violent operation. The SWAT team came to Culosi's house because another Fairfax County detective, David Baucum, overheard him and some friends wagering on a college football game at a bar....

City officials in Paragould, Arkansas, a town of 26,000, are recommending a plan that would enact martial law beginning in 2013. The plan, purportedly a response to recent property and violent crimes, would send police into the streets with AR-15 rifles and authorize them to stop anyone in the street and demand to know what they are doing. Mayor Mike Gaskill and Police Chief Todd Stovall announced in a town hall meeting last week that the program would begin in the new year: “[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck,” Stovall said. “If...

BELMONT, Maine — Mack Page was sound asleep in his bed at 11 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 3, when he was startled awake by the frantic barking of his black Labrador. “What have I got now?” the 63-year-old commander of the Maine Militia remembers wondering. “A raccoon? A coyote?” But it was none of those things. Instead, Page’s dark residence on a quiet Belmont road suddenly was lit up by men outside his windows carrying flashlights. He lives alone, he’s not in the best of health and he was scared. “They called, ‘State police! Come out with your hands up!’”...

A college student was injured during an FBI raid Thursday morning in District Heights, Md. Agents were executing a search warrant at a home in the 6700 block of Kipling Parkway when the SWAT team "felt threatened" by a woman in the home, authorities said. Homeowner Emory Hughley, a former military service member, was present at the incident. He told News4's Jackie Bensen that one agent fired at his 18-year-old daughter, Myasia, at least seven times with a semi-automatic weapon. Hughley said his son and two of Myasia's friends were also in the house when a SWAT team of about...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Fire crews battled a blaze in the apartment involved in a SWAT standoff Wednesday afternoon. Metro Police said a man wanted for violent offenses shot at police Wednesday morning leading to a standoff on South Campbell Street. View scene images SWAT was called to the scene in the 400 block of South Campbell Street. Police said the Violent Incident Prevention, Enforcement and Response unit was going to serve warrants on the man at an apartment when the man fired at an officer. Police said the man barricaded himself alone inside a home.

A sensitive and peace-loving 16-year-old boy from an affluent Georgia suburb was fatally gunned down by a police sniper in his own house after he threatened to kill himself following a bad day at school. Young Andrew Messina cracked after receiving a bad grade and upon returning home he grabbed his parents .357 Magnum and told his mother he wanted to end his life. Panicked, she called the police to come and talk him down, but instead, an army of deputies, an armoured tank and a sniper arrived at their Towne Lake home.... ***** However, the Messina's attorney Chuck Pekor...

A 14-year-old activist and blogger was shot in the head on her way back from school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley on Tuesday, the latest in a troubling string of incidents involving children in Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai was injured along with two travel companions when Taliban assailants opened fire on their vehicle in the town of Mingora. By evening, Yousafzai, who started blogging about the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education in Swat when she was 11, was in stable condition and en route to a military hospital in Peshawar.

Salt Lake police are investigating how a narcotics team mistakenly confronted an elderly woman in her home while serving a no-knock warrant at the wrong address. It is critical the investigation produce a full and complete public accounting of precisely what went wrong in order to restore confidence that proper procedures and controls for serving such warrants are in place. The use of no-knock warrants has become a favorite and frequently used tool of agencies deployed in the so-called war on drugs. The courts have upheld the use of such warrants, even though they tread along a narrow line between...

A 12-year-old girl suffered burns to one side of her body when a flash grenade went off next to her as a police SWAT team raided a West End home Tuesday morning. "She has first- and second-degree burns down the left side of her body and on her arms," said the girl's mother, Jackie Fasching. "She's got severe pain. Every time I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes." Medical staff at the scene tended to the girl afterward and then her mother drove her to the hospital, where she was treated and released later that day. A...

Paul Brown was working on his computer in his north suburban home when police smashed in the front door, pointed guns at and handcuffed him and other family members, and ransacked the house in a search for drugs. The authorities had burst in immediately after a postal worker delivered a package to the home that they said contained marijuana. But a search of the house found no further contraband, and officers left without making an arrest. Brown, outraged, said he was sure the cops had the wrong house. Police maintained they had the right place, but the target of their...

Steve and Jennifer Tuppeny describe an early morning raid by Wilmington SWAT team members on their Middletown home. Officers were in search of a man who had not lived in the house since 2009. (10/4/12)

Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was killed during a SWAT raid in Detroit over the weekend (more here and here). Police raided a duplex looking for a suspect in a murder investigation. According to Jones' family, the suspect was arrested in the apartment opposite where the little girl was shot. Police thus far are only saying that they had a warrant for the entire building, and that the suspect was arrested in that building. The family says when police tossed a flashbang grenade through the window of the apartment where Jones was sleeping, the device ignited the blanket on her bed and...

An Evansville, Indiana SWAT team recently attempted to execute a search warrant that was issued to make an example out of an anonymous Internet user who made malicious remarks on the Web. Instead, they destroyed the home of an innocent grandmother. When members of the Midwest town’s SWAT team plotted their raid on the alleged home of the person behind some unpleasant remarks published on an Internet forum, they invited a local television crew to accompany them so that they could catch the whole thing on camera. Instead of arresting the author of the ill-tempered posts, however, the Evansville SWAT...

<p>Imagine you're sitting at home, comfortable on the couch, watching the Food Network, when all of a sudden a heavily armed SWAT team breaks down your door and storms into your living room.</p> <p>That's what happened to 18-year-old Stephanie Milan, who was watching TV in her family's Evansville, Ind., home last Thursday (June 22), when a team of police officers broke down her storm door — the front door was already open — and tossed a flash-bang stun grenade into the room.</p>

EVANSVILLE — An affidavit filed in Vanderburgh Superior Court shows the Evansville Police Department did not have a specific suspect when a fully armed SWAT team stormed into a house last week with "flashbang" stun grenades and found only a teenage girl and her grandmother.

EVANSVILLE — Stephanie Milan, 18, was relaxing in her family’s living room Thursday watching the Food Network when a heavily armed squad of Evansville police officers arrived on the front porch. Dressed in full protective gear, police broke the storm door of the home at 616 East Powell Ave. — the Milans’ front door was already open on the hot summer day. They also broke a front window. They tossed a flashbang stun grenade into the living room that made a deafening blast. A short distance away, a local television crew’s cameras were rolling. The police had invited the station...

No joke. It happened around 6 p.m. Eastern. I briefly talked with one of the police officers at the scene, who confirmed that someone had called saying he had shot his wife, and sent officers to Aaron’s address. I just got off the phone with Aaron and he and his wife are a little shaken up but OK. The officers had machine guns but did not point them at Aaron. They were quickly able to determine it was a hoax. Aaron plans to post about it later.

Vander Lee was sitting with his brother and wife on the patio of Tanners Station in Andover about 7 p.m. Saturday when Clifford punched him once in the head, authorities said. The 43-year-old fell to the ground and struck his head on the concrete patio. Clifford, executive officer of the Minneapolis Police Department's SWAT unit, then left the bar, authorities said. According to the criminal complaint, Clifford said he was with his wife and acquaintances when he heard Brian Vander Lee using offensive language at a nearby table. He said he asked Vander Lee to stop, which he reportedly did...

STOCKTON - It can withstand AK-47 rounds from point-blank range. Fifty-caliber bullets will not penetrate its hull or puncture its run-flat tires. Ballistic glass more than an inch thick protects the occupants as they serve high-risk search warrants or handle hostage situations. It is a modified Ford F-550 truck known as the Lenco BearCat G3, and it is the newest addition to the Stockton Police Department's motor pool. Essentially paid for by selling items taken from drug dealers the past several years, the BearCat was formally introduced to the community Wednesday morning during a Stockton SWAT team training session. Team...

Police officers in Indiana are upset over a new law allowing residents to use deadly force against public servants, including law enforcement officers, who unlawfully enter their homes. It was signed by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels in March. The first of its kind in the United States, the law was adopted after the state Supreme Court went too far in one of its rulings last year, according to supporters. The case in question involved a man who assaulted an officer during a domestic violence call. The court ruled that there was “no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police...

Have you heard of SWATing? Someone calls 911 falsely claiming that a person has killed someone or is about to do so. It can bring down a world of hurt, complete with sirens and a SWAT team with drawn guns. In a radio interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, conservative Web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart began warning people about the tactic shortly before he collapsed and died on March 1. No, I’m not suggesting his death had anything to do with this, however convenient it was for the political Left. Over the past year, strong-arm tactics have been used against prominent...

Conservative bloggers say they are being terrorized by a potentially deadly prank in which phony 911 calls bring armed cops to their doors in search of criminals, all in retaliation for their blog posts. At least two conservative Internet pundits have reported being victims of "SWAT-ing." In at least one incident, the caller claimed to be the resident of the home and confessed to shooting his wife, according to a recording of the call posted online. "It's a phone call that could have gotten me killed," Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, wrote...

Pressure is mounting to normalize the use of drones in the United States. "Don't drone, me, bro!"—that's one way to sum up Charles Krauthammer's heated reaction to last week's news that the Federal Aviation Administration had loosened restrictions on local police departments' use of surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. "Stop it here, stop it now," Krauthammer exclaimed on Fox News's "Special Report" Monday, "I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home. ... I'm not encouraging, but I am predicting that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that's been hovering over his...

Early one Saturday morning, 70-year old retired Air Force reservist and former state employee Joe Del Rio was awoken by a knock on his front door. It was the city of Austin’s local code enforcement team. One of the agents told Mr. Del Rio that he needed to speak to him right away. After getting dressed Mr. Del Rio went and opened his front door. He was immediately bum rushed by the Austin Police Department’s SWAT Team and then detained and interrogated for over 10 hours. What was this 70-year old mans crime? It seems that the Mr. Del Rio...

Police tear gas launched into a Vallejo home in February played a role in starting a fire that caused $60,000 in damage and killed two dogs, a fire department report released Monday finds. However, the Feb. 10, two-alarm blaze at 1041 Castlewood Drive was deemed "accidental in nature," according to the 13-page investigation report. The exact cause was undetermined. But it likely involved one of the non-flammable rounds hitting or knocking over flammable household products, the report said. The fire began shortly after police launched 12 tear gas rounds into various parts of the house. Police were trying to ferret...

The man shot by Washington County tactical officers in New Columbia Tuesday night had grabbed a gun because he thought intruders were on his property after his wife had checked on their barking dog in their backyard and saw a stranger in dark clothing. Alberto Flores-Haro, according to relatives and witnesses, did not know that the men surrounding his home and neighborhood Tuesday night were authorities approaching to raid a residence just a few doors down from his home in the 9500 block of North Woolsey Avenue. "There was someone in our backyard, and my mom called our stepdad," said...

Three people connected to Jose Guerena, the man shot and killed during a SWAT raid in May 2011, were arrested on drug and money laundering charges Thursday morning.

Last September, members of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas drove out to a training facility run by Vanguard Defense Industries. The air must have been full of excitement. The sheriff’s office was just a month away from getting its very own drone from Vanguard: a $300,000 Shadowhawk helicopter, paid for by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. Members of the sheriff’s office were there to see Vanguard fly some of its drones and to take promotional photos with a model of their-soon-to-be-acquired Shadowhawk. The S.W.A.T. team even brought their BearCat, a scary-looking tank increasingly popular with...

Further details from KRDO reveal that when the police came to the home previously (at around 10 p.m. on Christmas 2011), Ball and Glandorf showed their medical marijuana cards, but refused to let officers in because they didn’t have a warrant. This, says Colorado Springs police spokesperson Barbara Miller, is kind of dubious: “If you have nothing to hide, most people would open the door and say, ‘Yes, please come in and and let’s dispel any information you have because it’s false.” **** And after that, no arrests were made or charges were filed, because the patients were not growing...

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is probing the weekend shooting death of an Iraq war veteran in an armed standoff near Appling County’s Surrency community, Appling Sheriff Bennie DeLoach said. Neighbors of James M. Dixon III, 31, called the Sheriff’s Office about 3:50 a.m. Sunday to say someone had fired a shot through their house, DeLoach said in a release. Deputies went to Dixon’s house but decided for safety reasons to wait until daylight before confronting whoever fired the shot, DeLoach said. As they waited, Dixon left the house and drove to his parents’ house about a half mile away...

MILWAUKEE -- When President Obama's motorcade drove through Milwaukee Wednesday, traffic was shut down. That's a standard security measure normally handled by the Sheriff's Department, but Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said because of budget cuts he didn't have the manpower, and so the State Patrol handled it instead. Sources tell 12 News the department had plenty of people on duty, but they were in Waukesha County. The Sheriff's department confirms they had people at the Association of SWAT Conference and Vendor show in Oconomowoc. Sources said more than 15 and as many as 25 members of the Milwaukee County...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -Under a just passed law, Illinois SWAT units can now attach silencers to their weapons. The silencer is designed to give police special operations teams the advantage if they find themselves in a firefight . The sponsor of the measure, state senator Dave Koehler says if police have to enter a room and fire their weapons the silencer allows them to concentrate on their target. “Hearing loss of up to 15 seconds can make a big difference between whether hostages are killed or not.”

College students were glued to their television sets on April 16, 2007 when news broke of the Virginia Tech shootings. And with a tragedy that hits to close to home, we think, “Was there anything we could have done to stop this?” Well, no.  But, there are ways that we can help to prepare for future situations and maybe even save a few lives.At UNC Charlotte, the Campus Police and Public Safety Department are taking measuring to make sure their squad is prepared to match any dangerous encounters on its campus.  So, in 2010 the first UNC Charlotte Special Weapons...

A Massachusetts woman says the FBI used a chain saw blade to cut through her door and held her at gunpoint for at least 30 minutes before agents realized they were conducting a raid at the wrong home. Judy Sanchez, of Fitchburg, says she awoke to heavy footsteps in the stairwell on Jan. 26 and walked into her kitchen in time to see a blade chop through her door. "I took two steps, face the second door, and I heard the click of a gun, and saying, ‘FBI, get down,’ so I laid down on my living room floor,” Sanchez...