[107326] in Cypherpunks
SNET: 30,000 local police SWAT teams train nationwide to attack civilians
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
Sun Jan 10 21:57:03 1999
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 99 18:48:38 -0800
From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Reply-To: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
From: USCMike1@aol.com
Subject: SNET: 30,000 local police SWAT teams train nationwide to attack civilians
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 13:24:08 EST
To: thedoodlebug@juno.com, jhardin@mindspring.com, Kc8171@aol.com
-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
(sent to USCMike1's 8,500+ mailing list - please repost to your own mailing
list)
Now it's police become soldiers, the community be-comes the enemy . . . It's a
war
Thanks to thedoodlebug@juno.com, jhardin@mindspring.com, Kc8171@aol.com for
forwarding this post.
Subj: fwd for you to read
Date: 99-01-03 10:32:58 EST
From: Kc8171
To: USCMike1
So glad to start hearing from you again. I received this and thought you
would like to read it if you haven't already heard about this.
> Subject: The Horror of Y2K Swat Teams
> Date: Wednesday, December 30, 1998 9:00 PM
>
> Friends, This is what you can expect with Y2K SWAT Teams. Many of you will
> ask how can this already be happening in America. This is from
thedoodlebug@juno.com
>
> Jim Hardin
>
> http://freedompage.home.mindspring.com
> To receive Freedom Page mail, put "Subscribe"
> as subject to jhardin@mindspring.com
>
> From: thedoodlebug@juno.com
>
> --------- Begin forwarded message ----------
> From: joehoyal@juno.com (Joe Hoyal)
> Subject: something you will be faced with unless you begin Now to stand
> up for your Rights
> >
> >Subject: War on Crime
> >Source: SF Bay Guardian, November 18, 1998
> >
> >WAR ON CRIME
> >
> >The SFPD used SWAT-style equipment to raid a Western Addition housing
> >project. Does military gear encourage military policing?
> >
> >by Christian Parenti
> >
> >JUST BEFORE, DAWN on Oct. 30, 90 law-enforcement officers wearing black
> >masks and fatigues and armed with assault rifles stormed the Martin Luther
> >King Jr./Marcus Garvey Cooperative in the Western Addition. They used
> >special "shock-lock" shotgun rounds to blow apartment doors off their
hinges and cleared people out of rooms by throwing "flash-bang grenades,"
which produce nonlethal explosions that terrify and disorient people.
> >
> >At a Nov. 4 police commission meeting, a train of furious and sobbing
residents from the raided housing complex - all of them African American
-described how officers slapped them, stepped on their necks and put guns to
their heads while other officers ransacked their homes. Weeping and terrified
children, some as young as six, were handcuffed and separated from their
parents. Some urinated in their pajamas. (Police chief Fred Lau told the San
Francisco Chronicle that officers wanted to keep the kids from "running
around.")
> >
> >Residents of the complex say the raid was a violation of their civil
rights. Scores of people with no charges against them and no criminal records
were put in disposable plastic "flex-cuffs." Civil servants and grandmothers
were held at gunpoint. One woman was hospitalized after a fit of seizures;
other people were so distraught they couldn't return to work for days.
> >
> >And a pit bull named Bosco - which many residents described as well liked
and friendly - was shot inside an apartment, dragged bleeding outside, and
shot again. Deputy chief Richard Holder told police commissioners that
according to police intelligence gathered during covert operations," the dog
was "known for its jumping ability and was shot in midair."
> >
> >The squad that raided the housing complex included agents from the San
Francisco Police Department's tactical squad and narcotics division, the
District Attorney's office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. According to SFPD narcotics
lieutenant Kitt Crenshaw, who initiated and planned the operation, the action
was designed to "put fear in the hearts" of a gang called the Knock Out Posse.
"The raid went off, more or less, without a hitch," Crenshaw said. "I feel
bad for the innocent women and children that were there, but in a way they do
bear some responsibility for harboring drug dealers."
Agents made 11 arrests and netted a pound of what Crenshaw described as
"high-grade" marijuana, almost four ounces of crack cocaine, seven pistols,
and $4,000 cash. Residents say that money was not drug lucre, that it had
been collected to help pay for the funeral of Germain Brown, a recently
deceased friend. Thanks to state and federal asset forfeiture laws, the SFPD
may get to keep and spend 80 percent of the seized money.
> >
> >SWAT NATION
> >
Though the raid on the King/Garvey project was brutal and audacious, it was
not unusual. Paramilitary or tactical policing -law enforcement that uses the
equipment" training, rhetoric, and tactics of warfare is on the rise
nationwide. According to a study by sociologist Peter Kraska, there are more
than 30,000 heavily armed, militarily trained police units in the United
States and the number of paramilitary police "call-outs" quadrupled between
1980 and 1995.
> >
> >The tactical buildup has been fueled by fattened drug-war budgets and a
wave of federal largesse. Between 1995 and 1997 the Department of Defense
gave local police 1.2 million pieces of military hard- ware, including more
than 3,800 M16 automatic assault rifles, 2,185 Rugar M 14 semiautomatic
rifles, - 73 M79 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers (APCs).
One tactical outfit calls its APC ,'mother"; another, in east Texas, has named
its APCs "Bubba One" and "Bubba Two."
Military gear given to the SFPD includes two helicopters, several
electrical generators, vehicles, and office furniture, according to tactical
officer Dino Zografos. Several years ago the department acquired two APCs from
the United Kingdom.
The department's 45-officer tac-squad buys its own AR 15 and MP53 assault
rifles. Most of the SFPD's tactical training is done in-house, though SWAT
officers have received special instruction from FBI, military, and private
instructors.
Nationwide, tactical units have metastasized from emergency response teams
into a standard part of everyday policing. SWAT teams that would once have
been called in only to handle the occasional barricaded suspect now conduct
routine drug raids like the one on the King/Garvey co-op. In Fresno,
Indianapolis, and San Francisco they even patrol high-crime areas.
Critics of SWAT-style policing say militarized training, weaponry, and
organization cause cops to over-react and treat ordinary policing situations
as military operations. "The fundamental problem with the SWAT model is that
if police become soldiers, the community be-comes the enemy," says Sacramento
State University sociologist Tony Platt, one of the first scholars to analyze
the rise of tactical policing. "Paramilitary policing erodes the idea of
police as pubic servants subordinate to community needs."
> >
> >And Kraska says, "The more paramilitary police units exist, the more all
policing will be militiarized." Considering what's happening around the
country, those charges don't seem far-fetched. According to a CBS News survey
of SWAT encounters, police use of deadly force has increased 34 percent in the
past three years.
TACTICAL FUTURE
For a look at the future of American law enforcement, travel south on
Highway 99 from San Francisco to Fresno, and turn off on one of the city's
southern exits. On the pocked side streets of southwest Fresno's sprawling
ghetto, among fading stucco bungalows and dying rail yards, massive
paramilitary police operations take place almost every night.
It's a cold October night; 30 police officers (three squads of 10) don
black jumpsuits, military helmets, and bulletproof vests, lock and load their
Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns, and fan out for a routine patrol. Meet
Fresno's Violent Crime Suppression Unit (VCSU), the Fresno P.D.'s "special
forces" and America's most aggressive SWAT team.
Since 1994 the VCSU has patrolled the city's have-not suburbs in full
military gear, with automatic assault rifles (the same model used by Navy
SEALS) at the ready. The unit is backed by two helicopters with infrared
scopes and an army-surplus APC; it's equipped with attack dogs, flash-bang
grenades, smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper spray, metal clubs, and "blunt trama
ordinance," essentially beanbags fired from shotguns, designed to daze rather
than kill.
"It's a war," Sgt. Margaret Mims of the Fresno Sheriff's Department says.
In the name of crisis management, the VCSU is free to use aggressive and
unorthodox tactics. Sometimes the unit quietly deploys troops on foot to
surround targeted corners or sweep through neighborhoods. At other times,
like this autumn night, agents move in a fleet of regular patrol cars "like a
wolf pack" looking for "contact," as a VCSU officer put it.
"Contacts" generally involve swooping onto street comers, forcing pedestrians
to the ground, searching them, running warrant checks, taking photos, and
entering
all the new "intelligence" into a state database from computer terminals in
each patrol car. The area of operation is a poor and desolate African
American neighborhood Fresno residents call the Dog Pound.
As the patrol makes a routine traffic stop, a man is standing on the
sidewalk talking to the driver. When the VCSU pull up, he flees into a nearby
house. The VCSU immediately surround the area. Officers with AR15s and H&K
MP5s "hold the perimeter," some watching the house, others looking out at the
neighborhood. Five officers rush the door.
The VCSU are not, technically, in "hot pursuit." They have no legal right
to enter the premises. But the elderly woman behind the black metal door is
confronted with five SWAT-style officers with submachine guns, and they want
to search her house. She consents. Five big, white cops move into the living
room and grab a young African American man. They demand to know his name;
it's David. "What?" he says. "Man, I didn't do anything!" As he protests,
his voice cracks and a tearful grimace clouds his face.
With consent from David's trembling grandmother, three cops search the
little bungalow. For all the agents' science fiction-esque uniforms and
state-of-the-art gear, they call up an awful specter from the past.
More than anything else, the robocops of the VCSU resemble the "patrollers"
of
the Old South, the slave-catching militias that spent their nights rousting
plantation shacks looking for contraband, weapons, and signs that slaves were
planning to escape north.
"Are you on parole, probation? Hub?" a VCSU officer demands. "Let's go
outside, David." The suspect is cuffed, searched, interrogated, and forced to
the ground. His name is fed into a computer. A flashlight is continuously
pointed at his face. No drugs are found. But David lied, saying he wasn't on
parole, and he is. "That's a violation of parole, David." The white cops
send another black man off to jail.
For much of the rest of the night, a standoff occupies 30 cops from three
different agencies and two from three different agencies and two helicopters.
The target is a teenager who hasn't been charged with anything; he's just
wanted for questioning. "If you're 21, male, living in one of these
neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then there's definitely
something wrong," VCSU officer Paul Boyer says.
WIDESPREAD ABUSES
Fresno's is the only police department in the country that deploys its
tactical units for routine patrol work. But big, aggressive SWAT operations
like the one at the King/Garvey co-op are becoming more common. From
Albuquerque to Miami, tactical teams have repeatedly shot and killed unarmed
civilians in the course of botched drug raids. In a recent case in Bethlehem,
PA, a SWAT team killed a suspect, then burned his house down.
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