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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 Obama administration has turned bureaucrats at environmental agencies into armed SWAT teams to conduct unprecedented raids on small mining operations for what used to be simple reviews of clean water permits. That’s according to Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, chairman of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on energy and mineral resources, who held a hearing Thursday that examined the August raid of armed federal officials including the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicken, Alaska. Lamborn said the “EPA SWAT team of heavily armed and armored agents conducted paperwork inspections on small mining operations, in what appears nothing more than an...

Policing: The Dallas County Sheriff's Office gets an MRAP tactical military vehicle, used for counterinsurgency fighting in Iraq, as law enforcement becomes a collection of SWAT teams pursuing not-always-guilty Americans. In early August, a SWAT team broke through the gates of a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, that promotes a sustainable lifestyle and did a 10-hour search of the property. Residents were handcuffed and held at gunpoint as police looked for nonexistent marijuana plants and various city code violations. As the owners watched, 10 tons of their private property was hauled off in trucks — dangerous items such as blackberry...

Thursday, Federal agents raided Lumber Liquidators. Lumber Liquidators advertises heavily on The Rush Limbaugh Show and even put in the flooring for one of Rush’s studios. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports: "Agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Justice executed the search warrant at the company’s headquarters and plant near Williamsburg, said Brandon Montgomery, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security." The reason for the raid? Suspicion of using Mongolian Wood. Mongolian wood, apparently, is an imminent threat to Homeland Security.

An incident at the Bridgeport Village Regal Cinema in Portland, Oregon, involving multiple law enforcement agencies, turned out to be a comedy of errors. During the movie, "Prisoners," an elderly man stood up and urinated. It is believed he may have been drinking. The urine fell on a teenager sitting in the row in front of him. This upset a nearby woman who started yelling "Gun!" over and over. Theater patrons began running for the exits, and someone called 911, which led to "a massive response from multiple agencies." 'Investigators tell FOX 12 they quickly figured out what happened after...

FULL TITLE - "DC Capitol SWAT Team That Was Ordered NOT To Neutralize Navy Yard Shooter STILL Not Debriefed, And PD Removes Leader Without Explanation" On Wednesday, BBC News reported the indefensible discovery that the D.C. Capitol Police’s SWAT team was ready to neutralize the Navy Yard mass shooting. But, the highly trained and heavily armed, elite tactical group was, instead, ordered to stand down and leave the scene. The Capitol Police promised a full investigation. Today, BBC News reported more disturbing information. No one has talked to the SWAT team members. Not even for the protocol debriefing. But, not...

Meanwhile, the department has installed a new leader of the elite unit. No reason has been given for the decision. Gunman Aaron Alexis killed 12 people. The BBC has also learned that four members of the highly trained team have applied for temporary leave, as they "grapple" with the aftermath of the incident. The Capitol Police department has not yet granted the request, nor given approval for them to use their own paid time off.

Washington DC's Capitol Police have ordered a review into a BBC report that an armed police team was ordered not to respond to Monday's mass shooting. A tactical response team from the force was told by a supervisor to leave the scene instead of aiding municipal officers, police sources told the BBC. The Capitol Police sources suggest they could have saved lives had they been allowed to go in. Aaron Alexis, 34, killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. In a statement on Wednesday, the US Capitol Police Board said the force's Chief Kim Dine had asked it to...

A tactical response team of the Capitol Police, a force that guards the US Capitol complex, was told to leave the scene by a supervisor instead of aiding municipal officers. The Capitol Police department said senior officials were investigating. Aaron Alexis, 34, killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday. "I don't think it's a far stretch to say that some lives may have been saved if we were allowed to intervene," a Capitol Police source familiar with the incident told the BBC. A former Navy reservist, Alexis was working as a technical contractor for the Navy and...

TUCSON, AZ (CBS5) - CBS 5 Investigates has learned that attorneys for Pima County have agreed to settle a case with the family of a slain Iraq War veteran, who was gunned down during a SWAT raid at the vet's home. In the original claim, Jose Guerena's family demanded $20 million. The family's attorney, Christopher Scileppi, confirmed that the sides has reached an agreement, but that it still needed the approval of the county board of supervisors and the court. He did not say how much the family would receive in the settlement. At issue was whether an innocent man...

<p>A home was heavily damaged after an operation to find gang members who are indicted on 97 counts.</p> <p>SWAT members were looking for Jashavious Keel. He is one of the suspects named in a Chatham County indictment. The district attorney's office said 14 West 61st Street is his last known address.</p>

Amid the explosions, smoke, roaring vehicles and chattering gunfire of a terrorist attack Thursday afternoon at Port Everglades, one fact became chillingly clear: These weren't foreign-born America-hating terrorists. These were native-born America-hating terrorists. And they were making things difficult for the good guys. "They're moving, they're taking positions, they have superior firepower," said Sheriff's Deputy Richard Saito. "They're clearly very well-trained, very well-motivated." Of course it wasn't a real terrorist attack, but rather a large-scale SWAT training exercise mounted by the Broward Sheriff's Office involving boats, bus, bombs and booby-trapped hostages. "This is really a worst case scenario," said Saito,...

"On September 7, 2013, at approximately 4:25 p.m., Officers of the Pine Bluff Police Department responded to a disturbance at 1411 W. 16th. When they arrived, they were able to determine that an Aggravated Assault had occurred against two people at the residence. The suspect, Monroe Isadore (M, 107 years old), had pointed a weapon at them. The officers had the two victims leave the residence, for their safety, and approached the door to the bedroom where Isadore was supposed to be. When officers announced themselves, Isadore shot through the door at them. No officer was hit or injured by...

PINE BLUFF (KATV - A stand-off on Saturday left one man dead. S.W.A.T. Officers shot and killed the suspect after a standoff at a Pine Bluff home. Lt. David Price told channel 7 that when officers arrived at the home they learned that an aggravated assault had occurred against two people. The suspect, Monroe Isadore, who authorities say is 107-year-old old, pointed a weapon at them. Authorities asked the two victims to leave the home and walked up to the bedroom door where Isadore was supposed to be. When officers identified themselves to the suspect he shot at them through...

PINE BLUFF, Ark. (KTHV) - A 107-year old Pine Bluff man died Saturday after a shootout with officers and S.W.A.T. members. The Pine Bluff Police Dept. released the following information about the incident on Saturday evening. "On September 7, 2013, at approximately 4:25 p.m., Officers of the Pine Bluff Police Department responded to a disturbance at 1411 W. 16th. When they arrived, they were able to determine that an Aggravated Assault had occurred against two people at the residence. The suspect, Monroe Isadore (M, 107 years old), had pointed a weapon at them. The officers had the two victims leave...

(CNN) -- A man who police said was 107 years old was killed in a confrontation with SWAT officers Saturday night. Police were called to a home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where suspect Monroe Isadore was. "When they arrived, they were able to determine that an aggravated assault had occurred against two people at the residence," Lt. David E. Price, a Pine Bluff police spokesman, said in a statement.

PINE BLUFF (KATV) - A stand-off on Saturday left one man dead. S.W.A.T. Officers shot and killed the suspect after a standoff at a Pine Bluff home. Lt. David Price told channel 7 that when officers arrived at the home they learned that an aggravated assault had occurred against two people. The suspect, Monroe Isadore, who authorities say is 107-year-old old, pointed a weapon at them. Authorities asked the two victims to leave the home and walked up to the bedroom door where Isadore was supposed to be. When officers identified themselves to the suspect he shot at them through...

Chicken Alaska…no, it’s not some savory culinary dish a la chicken alexander but rather a small gold mining town with a population of 17.The members of this town were treated to a rather rude awakening when their little slice of the last frontier was descended upon by a cavalcade of Federal and State agencies.  Or more accurately, the Federal Agencies descended while bringing on some token State agencies in order to make it look less like an invasion and subjugation of state sovereignty.This raid, in which the agencies involved (10) nearly outnumbered the residents of the town (17) is somehow...

Some miners in Alaska want the feds to start digging for answers. A task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid. “Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say "POLICE" emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have...

Are cops constitutional? In a 2001 article for the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, the legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for police as they exist today. At the very least, he argues, police departments, powers and practices today violate the document’s spirit and intent. “Under the criminal justice model known to the framers, professional police officers were unknown,” Roots writes.