More on Radley Balko’s Article
I was on Blackfive, a very interesting mil blog site. Unfortunately what caught my eye was another posting about Radley Balko’s article on the militarization of police forces. I’ve copied my comments there below:
I saw this article from an Instapundit link. I checked into the stats and blogged about it at my site:
http://response39.blogsome.com/2006/07/19/instapunditcom-just-the-facts-maam/The data aren’t that alarming. To quote myself,
“At first, this looks just as bad as the claims in the article. Then I looked at the numbers:
“These 293 results represent
The state of: All
For the year: All
And the following type of incident: All”The All years must cover back to 1985, the earliest year that can be queried.”
In youre response to “The New Guy” you state, “I am with you new guy and in the cases where you pulled those large bunches of ugly stuff, you most likely knew you were dealing with serious bad guys. Far too many of these cases involve, folks who counld not reasonably be considered dangerous, and I still hold to my belief that dynamic entry is an absloute last resort.
A little cunning and trickeration should yield an easier way to do this than actually busting in the doors.”
I have to say that you’ve fallen into the trap of post-event prediction. Just because of all those rights guaranteed (see Balko’s response above), the police cannot have even very good intelligence on what the suspect has or might have. The cops have seen everything including body armor and a tank in the commission of crimes!
I don’t quarrel with your “more training” mantra - everyone who has the ability and may have the requirement to save or end lives (including other first responders) needs as much training as possible. I think it’s a slam to say that the SWATs use these real events as “live training” anymore than it would be to say that all combat is simply live fire exercises with rude people. Lessons learned? You bet. Just like practice? That’s just the pep talk before the deployment.
