From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.drugs,alt.society.civil-liberty,seattle.general
Subject: Re: SWAT team kills innocent woman in No-Knock raid.
Summary: Chickens come home to roost for lawnOrder freaks (I wish!)
Keywords: SWAT police no-knock raid death thugs occupying-army friendly-fire
	Officer-Friendly Enemies-R-US
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:23:03 GMT
Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<

In article <1992Aug16.204906.11264@eskimo.celestial.com> wix@eskimo.celestial.com (Dennis Wicks) writes:
>This is indeed a tradgedy, and someone should pay for it, and I don't
>mean monetarily, and this practice should be stopped.

You did, all of you, already.  You wanted secure streets, less crime,
jail for drug dealers, and the right to be secure in the dim, flickering
light of your livingrooms, sealed off in your mercury-vapor-illuminated
urban fortresses.  You paid for it, and you got what you ordered.  You
failed to read the fine print, but it was there.  You ignored it, though,
and now the chickens are coming home to roost (hint -- much of the fine
print is contained in the Bill of Rights, and much more comes from history,
which, in a fit of cosmic user-friendliness, keeps repeating itself for your
continued edification).

>There is one person who should not be punished, IMO, and that is the
>SWAT officer who killed the lady.  He, and his fellow officers, went 
>to the house with the information that there was an armed and dangerous
>suspect inside that they were to apprehend.  In such situations the 
>officers are too often in a shoot-or-die situation.

This old cynic suspects that these guys are just adrenalin junkies and
thrill-seekers that get off playing close to the edge, and have found a
way to get the state to finance their habit.  Others go bungee-jumping.

>                                                     I am certain that
>this officer is going to remember and have nightmares about this 
>incident for the rest of his life.  Put yourself in his shoes.  He
>knows that he _killed_an_innocent_woman!  And no matter how he tries
>to reconcile that with his training, orders, and procedures, that 
>thought is always going to be with him.

Bosh, he'll just jam his pointy head down a bottle, seeking oblivion
and very likely finding it.

>The people at fault were far removed from the action.  The investigators
>who decided to act on the tip, the watch commander and other ranking
>officials in the law enforcement agencies that let the tips be acted
>on without further investigation, and possibly most of all, the 
>judges that issued the no-knock warrants on such flimsy evidence.

Not to mention the practice of "tipping" and finking on one's neighbor,
becoming institutionalized as a social practice -- When I was a kid, I
remember Cold War articles in Reader's Digest describing darkest Stalinist
Russia as a place of cowed tattletales, where kids informed on their parents
for ideological deviations, and the secret police ran a network of informers
with tentacles into all parts of society.  Now one can find post-Cold-War
articles in the same publication, advocating the same acts as the only
antidote for the fruiting body of the Cold War fungus, the Drug War.
Carrying the metaphor to perhaps excessive lengths [ :) ], one must ask,
what happens when the spore sac bursts? [ waggish note -- followups to
alt.tasteless :) ].  Only time can tell.  I think we're getting to a
"cusp", as the astrologers say.

Well, if they can try Honecker for actions he performed on duty, acting
in his official capacity, they can sure get these guys.  May have to Smash
State first, though.

>I think we can all remember cases where the original suspects were 
>later found to be innocent.  But there seems to be an attitude in 
>the law enforcement agencies and the prosecutors offices that the
>first person that becomes a suspect is the guilty party and all
>further investigation stops.  I am certain that somebody will say 
>that the police don't have the manpower to do all that investigating,
>but it seems to me that if they spent more time investigating
>they wouldn't be wasting so much time on arresting and prosecuting 
>people who turn out to be innocent.

What do you expect when they have pressures of "productivity" similar
to those seen in the worst of Taylorite work environments, and at the same
time have an almost unlimited budget from civil confiscations?  The glam
stuff gives the most bang for the buck, and maintaining a gung ho
image is paramount, or the taxpayers start getting restive.  It's really
a balancing act.

If you think you have cowboys here, be lucky you aren't in Florida, where
the Sherriff of Broward County, Nick Navarro, has carved himself a dukedom
amidst the Everglades canebrakes.  He was even making his own rock cocaine
for use in coke stings when said stings weren't bringing in enough rock to
act as stingbait for successive bust cycles.
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
e-mail me at kurt@eskimo.celestial.com for a copy of Bob Black's essay,
"The Abolition of Work"