Swat! There goes the neighborhood
By ROGER FRANKLIN
Jun 25 2000 00:56:28
Not so long ago, the police chief in sleepy Marion County, Florida, received a note from Uncle Sam. Drug gangs were growing more ruthless, it warned, and the spectre of terrorism was a national concern. Would he like to have his people trained in military combat techniques, and perhaps add some of the Pentagon's surplus equipment to his department's arsenal?
The chief didn't mind if he did. True, the district's orange groves had never been shaken by a bombing, harbored a terrorist cell, played host to a right-wing militia or served as a staging post for drug cartels. But all that was beside the point. Neighboring communities had started their own
SWAT teams, as have 7000 federal, state and local law enforcement communities nationwide, so the offer seemed a golden opportunity for Marion County to make up ground in America's domestic arms race.
A rack of assault rifles, cases of ammo and a bulletproof vest or two would be most welcome, the chief replied, never expecting the windfall of martial riches that was heading his way.
First came a dozen helicopters, followed six months later by seven more. Then a pair of C-12 transport aircraft, as well as a truckload of M-16 machineguns. And because no self-respecting American police department wants to be without one these days, the Pentagon also dispatched an armored personnel carrier.
All this in a district where the Mediterranean fruit fly is Public Enemy No 1.
What has happened in Marion County in the four years since the arsenal arrived is typical of a nationwide trend that has civil libertarians worried. While they wait for their local orchardists to become the targets
of international terror, Marion County's cops are keeping in practice by directing their 20-tonne tank at less formidable adversaries. As is the case across America, if you are growing a little marijuana, or have fallen behind on child support, the police are likely to enter without knocking.
Largely unnoticed until the photo of young Elian Gonzalez staring into the barrel of a machinegun was flashed around the world two months ago, the SWAT teams' iron fist in an iron glove has quietly become an integral part of US law enforcement. And as American police departments have discovered, the temptation to use all that equipment is proving irresistible.
Supporters, including President Clinton who has been an enthusiastic advocate of the Pentagon's growing role in police work, like to depict the SWAT squads as a survival tool for a dangerous age. The SWAT movement's
detractors point out that terrorists have left the US pretty much alone, and that it is average citizens - including a good many innocent ones - who keep finding themselves on the wrong end of a rifle butt.
"It all stems from the war on drugs," said Diane Weber, a legal analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington, who refers to the long and notably unsuccessful campaign to stop citizens getting high as "our second Vietnam".
"We've been told for four decades that drug use is a mortal threat to our society and now the same people who preached that first lie are claiming that we need a militarised police force to deal with it. What we're doing, though, is destroying the village to save it.
"The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were very worried about the state becoming too powerful, so they must be spinning in their graves now that tanks are rolling down Main Street."
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and the rest would certainly not have approved of what happened last May to Robert Goottee, who was sleeping peacefully in his Maryland home when 40 SWAT cops from the Fish and Wildlife Service - yes, even Smoky the Bear has acquired an assault squad - burst into home. His wife found herself hog-tied in the corner, where she could see a black-uniformed intruder holding a machine gun to her husband's head while another ground his face into the carpet with a steel-toed combat boot.
The couple's crime? Well, as a court later established, there was no crime - just the suspicion that Mr Goottee's fellow members of the Golden Hills Hunting Club had been shooting ducks out of season. After tearing the couple's home apart, they left with Mr Gootee in shackles, his shotguns, and a framed photograph of the couple's favorite Labrador emerging from the water with a mallard in its mouth.
In Boston, a SWAT squad invaded the wrong apartment and quite literally scared a 74-year-old Baptist minister to death. As he lay stricken with a heart attack, masked officers cordoned off the street and denied paramedics access to the building. Across the country in Dinuba, California, SWAT cops put 15 bullets into a father of three who made the mistake of leaping from bed when a dozen masked men charged into his bedroom at 2am. Once again, the cops had the wrong address.
In New Mexico, in a case that would be funny if it hadn't ended in tragedy, a SWAT sniper prevented a young man from committing suicide by shooting him in the head.
"There is much evidence that SWAT teams have an organisational culture that leads them to escalate violence," said Weber. "A warrior mentality has no place in civilian law enforcement. A police officer is not a soldier ... Traditionally, police work has been reactive: His job is to apprehend a
suspect and turn the suspect over to courts of law. But in the militarised police force, extreme force is acceptable, even expected."
This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000625/A31130-2000Jun24.html
