Showing posts with label SWAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SWAT. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Ferguson, Missouri Protest Of Michael Brown Death Swarmed By SWAT Team



By Alan Horowitz, Aug. 13, 2014, Huffingtonpost.com

Scores of SWAT officers swarmed Ferguson, Missouri, where unrest has broken out this week in the wake of a teenager's death.

Michael Brown, a black teenager, was unarmed when he was shot and killed by a police officer. The DOJ announced that it would look into allegations of racism and police brutality. The police officer's identity has not been released.

HuffPost's Ryan Reilly reported that a SWAT team of at least 70 people showed up the apparently peaceful demonstration. According to Reilly, cops told protesters to leave the area.

"This is not open for discussion," one officer said.

Police tactics during the unrest following the shooting have been criticized as over-aggressive. Earlier this week, cops used rubber bullets and tear gas against demonstrators, some of whom have been accused of looting.

Below are photos and videos of the scene, courtesy of Reilly.


Read the full story:  www.huffingtonpost.com

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Wednesday, April 23, 2014


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Monday, April 21, 2014



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Saturday, April 19, 2014

By John Fund, Apr. 18, 2014, National Review

Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.

They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.

“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

The proliferation of paramilitary federal SWAT teams inevitably brings abuses that have nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism. Many of the raids they conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.


Read the full story:  www.nationalreview.com



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