“You know, the Sheriff’s got his problems too,
He will surely take them out on you. . .”
Warren Zevon
BLAM!
BLAM! BLAM! It’s 2:00 a.m., down goes your door, men dressed in black body armor and carrying semi-automatic rifles shout at you . . . DOWN, DOWN ON THE GROUND, NOBODY MOVE!
***
Police with warrants to search a home (often for drugs or other evidence of non-violent crimes) are increasingly appearing in full SWAT gear and storming homes. Such incidents are up from 3,000 per year to over 40,000 per year since 1981.
A client of mine—a gentle, unassuming man—was arrested by a SWAT team. Police appeared with semi-automatic weapons and dogs and established a “safe perimeter” with an estimated ten officers when all they had to do was knock and ask. Hell, Amir (name changed) came to the door in his pajamas and was cuffed while his family invited the police in to search whatever and where ever they wished.
When fully armed SWAT teams burst into a house, things go wrong. At least forty people have been killed when cops employing SWAT tactics botched routine, non-SWAT-type tasks, such as serving or executing warrants.
Called for a noise complaint, police in Denver went berserk when a homeowner asked to see a warrant before letting them in. They beat the man (Rohit Mukherjee), calling the American who was born in New Jersey and raised in Florida a “f***ing Arab” (he was of eastern Indian heritage). When others present tried to make audio and video recording of the abuse, the police took their phones and dumped them in water to destroy the recordings (forensics experts were able to retrieve the recordings), according to Denver News Channel 7.
These warrants are often based on bad information, often because an informant who is already in jail is trading “information” for a lighter sentence.
These are dramatic, although not uncommon, examples. As always: know your rights. Such arrests are often invalid. Talk to a competent attorney. Do not talk to the cops.
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