Oh, uh, 3.

You’ve hit on the exact reason this “war on drugs” will go on forever. It has turned into an industry. Since government can’t turn a profit, the only measure of success is growth. An unwinnable war provides the perfect excuse for ever more personnel, equipment, usurpations of citizen rights, etc., all fueled by civil forfeiture.

I wasn’t criticizing you in the least Sir, just pointing out the danger of resistance..It’s a dilemma fer sure..

Me? I’m with you. Reflex. So was that guy I mentioned above and I am sure we all remember the soldier taken down by a sniper from the MD State Police in my county, disturbingly close to PG, on Christmas Day 2006…Remember that? After a 24 hour Mexican standoff they created, propagated and not-so-neatly finished..Because THEY could. I haven’t forgotten. I still remember the “State” sniper’s name..Coldly chilling, ain’t it?

b2

Properly trained SWAT teams are a great asset. They save lives by taking risks and by not using force. I interviewed the captain in charge of the New Orleans PD’s SWAT team in 1994. He was incredibly proud of his unit’s then-current streak of 400+ consecutive “rolls” without a round fired. He said his guys had confidence, borne of training and equipment, that allowed them to go deeper into an encounter than a beat cop would before deciding to shoot. Often, incredibly far past the point where it lethal force was legally justifed. Usually, somewhere past the point where they could shoot, they gathered enough awareness to understand that they didn’t have to shoot. Among other, more important things, they saved the city a great deal of money.

I’ve been on the wrong end of a drug war SWAT raid myself. It was all a big misunderstanding–they “rolled” on a college fraternity pledge event deep in bayou country. To my great good fortune, the deputies had the confidence to see how the situation developed and we all parted friends, nobody shot and nobody cuffed and nobody embarassed. They were well trained and confident and we were clean. Later, in law school, I saw my rural NY county sheriff disband his SWAT team because, while he had the Special Weapons aplenty, he didn’t have the budget for proficiency in Tactics. I think that’s how it plays out all too often–but most sheriffs don’t have the judgment to leave the M4s and MP-5s and sojer gea locked away until the budget permits recurrent training.

I’ve seen enough local news coverage of PG event to know that no trained and confident officer should have shot those dogs. Take the lab’s bite, tough guy, and look for the shooters (that you know wouldn’t be there, had you done your job). Yank their badges and put ‘em out writing parking tickets. These PG cops obviously haven’t “the training, nor the inclination” to bear arms on behalf of the State.