This one comes from my favorite vulgar libertarian, Radley Balko. Despite some of his corporate apologism he is doing some absolutely awesome work on police militarism. Today he has a penetrating comment on police justifications for SWAT raids:
Read this articleThis sort of case also emphasizes the inherent contradiction in the way police justify these raids. You'll notice in the article that the police say they conducted the no-knock, middle-of-the-night raid to catch the suspect and his family off-guard. They then turn around and say the girl who fired the gun should have known they were police officers. You can't have it both ways. You can't say nighttime SWAT raids are necessary to catch people unaware while they're sleeping, then say they "should have known" that the men invading their homes were police.
