Monday, July 17, 2006

Shoot first, get statistics later...

Today, the CATO Institute released an in-depth study on the rise of paramilitary police raids in America. The report was researched and written by libertarian blogger, Radly Balko. From the report's executive summary:
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
Link

1 comment:

Jonathan Perri said...

Make sure everyone checks out the "Bothced Paramilitary Raids" Map on the CATO site as well.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

Pretty horrific if you ask me.
Just click on your state, year, and the type of police fuck up and it will bring up cases.