It'd be remotely activated, not a tripwire or pressure plate.  Mailpeople are good and productive folk.  
[i][b]*disclaimer* Not that I advocate you should, or even I should ever do such a thing in this day and age[/b][/i]

Sigline context: From a thread regarding traffic stops and taillights.

Yeah, gated, barred, everything.
I think I could end up killing several, if not all of them before they do anything.
And it doesn't take much to wake me up, and I always get my shit together fast after I wake.

might also help to reinforce your doors so that instead of smashing their way in with the "ram" it just makes a loud as bang

I'd like to see them try to take down my front door with one of those things...Hehehe...Forgot to mention that...Gonna take a lot more than a couple guys with a heavy pipe put that door down...

Bad police work.
Yet another good reason to own dogs.

yeah, but look at all the crime our grandparents had to put up with. compared to the peaceful crime free world we live in now, can't you put up with the occasional dead old lady?

[imbro] Note to database; Bring RDX....[/imbro]

[:D]

So, I'm still waiting for advice from LEOs on how a law-abiding citizen should respond to his door being kicked down in the middle of the night?  

BTW, I read recently of a home invasion in which the criminals knocked on the door and flashed a phony badge to sucker the homeowner into thinking they were cops.  Since I read that, if somebody flashing a badge was on my porch and I don't see a cruiser with blue lights on top in my driveway, I think I'd tell them to wait a minute and make a 911 call to see if there were any cops dispatched to my address.

BTT.  Still no advice?  

Yep, that happened in my town, just west of Indianapolis.  Victim was kidnapped after two 'gentlemen' identifying themselves as DEA agents knocked on his door at night.

Who knew...and folks wonder why I CCW constantly.

The silence is deafening.

No, they should do as the chiefs of police that I spoke to recommended. They should either wait until the perp is out on the street and vulnerable and surround him, or they should assemble the SWAT team, if they think they need it, tell the people they are there and then wait them out.

The bad guys will look out the window and realize that it is a hopeless situation, think it over a while maybe, and then surrender. In any event, the police can stay behind barricades and not get hurt, and there is no chance of accidentally shooting innocent people.

As for convicting them after capture, as you said, they already have enough evidence for the conviction so there isn't any real need to bust down the door to keep the BGs from flushing the drugs.

But, of course, that doesn't let the cops play with their toys, so . . .

It seems that a fundamental question is whether the goals justify the tactics relative to the risk imposed upon innocent people.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?  Whatcha gonna do when they come for you???

[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/IG_LoadImage.asp?iImageUnq=12299[/img]



Whoops maam, sorry, wrong house!

Don't worry, we'll get off of your vehicle as soon as I'm done snapping this picture...


[img]http://photos.ar15.com/ImageGallery/IG_LoadImage.asp?iImageUnq=12298[/img]

Sounds like all you need, is a Lahti, and a hog pen...[:D]

Would have worked at waco... Didja know that ATF was INVITED to the farm house to inspect 9 MONTHS before the ATF raid?? They even had a drug lab!!! [rolleyes]

I hope most of you cops have explained your jobs to your families. They're gonna wonder why some day.......

Wolfman97,

You touch upon an interesting point.  How else can police departments justify all those expensive goodies??  I mean, they need a way to exhibit the need for hi-cap magazines, night-vision, body armor, full-auto, etc...  All the things you shouldn't have and don't need.  

But they do.  60 year old ladies can be extremely dangerous.  Almost as dangerous as a lion or tiger...but with a human brain!!  

Today's older, more sophisticated SUPER-criminal has to be delt with in the most extreme way.....

-Fuji

Hmmmm...they alredy have the proof, why do they need a no knock? Does said criminal have a teleporter to beam themselves out of the house? Why exactly cant they be taken outside the house?

If they DON'T have the proof already, then is a no knock really justified? (drug flushing being the argument here)

How about the use of force be toned down a bit. Say hostage situations where negotiation hasn't made progress. Somewhere that there is a REASONABLE threat to others that requires the immediate use of force such as SWAT style raids.

Joe drugdealer who operates criminal activity inside his home is not a real threat when his home is surrounded. And if it's the wrong house surrounded, well... that's much less of a problem than a no-knock raid on the wrong house.

This whole discussion reminds me of the movie Amos & Andy, or something like that... with Nicholas Cage and Samuel L Jackson. Watch it sometime and get a good laugh...

I am amazed at the number of LEO haters on this board. I agree that there are many LEO's that should NOT be on the job and know nothing about the Bill of Rights or the Constution and don't even care to know. Heck , I work with a bunch of them! This is a very sad state of affairs, but most Cops are just like you guys , trying to do what it right , raise a family , help others , and in general enjoy this wonderful life that we have as Americans. To answer the question about going after "Joe 6 pack" we already do , when "Joe" gets behind the wheel of a car or does anything else that can kill your wife or kids , I will go after anyone that thru their actions can harm another person and weekly risk my life to do just that. I DO NOT agree with the current drug laws and types of enforcement that we have , but until the "System" fixes itself we have to use the best tactics that we know to lessen all dangers to all involved. I will wager that most of you posters have very little if any "real life" experience with the intercity drug (mainly Crack & Meth) problem, yet many of you'all will second quess the Cop on the street all day long. We are barely holding back the floodgates of the intercitys from massively spilling out into you'all nice, quite,peaceful subdivisions. There is never a reason to knowly abuse a Citizens Rights that can be justified and all we can say when we do make a mistake is that we are truely sorry and will work very hard to assure that it does not happen again , I know that this does not bring a person back from the dead , but its all we can do , and thats how it is , like it or not. I am sure that some of you'all will respond back in a hateful way and that is OK , In the last 15 years I have gotten use to being spit at , its part of being a Cop , goes right along with giving your life to save a total strangers. Take Care.

Para069: Slow down, my friend.  I can only speak for myself, and above I tried to clarify that my problem in this thread is not with cops, but with this particular tactic.

I'll be the first to say that you guys are some of the most underspaid, underappreciated, overworked people going.  I can't think of anyone else who leaves their house each day facing the risks you do.  That's awesome and I thank you.

It's a part of life that it's the bad apples that get the attention.  You've probably seen more of them than I ever will.  Like any other field, they are the minority.  The good guys don't get the recognition they deserve.  I saw it for 21 years in the military.  It's surely not fair, but there were times I just had to be satisfied knowing I was doing my best, because my boss was too lazy to do the paperwork on a dec I deserved.

If I started to sound adversarial in my question it's just because I'm really concerned about it.  That's all.  Don't take it personally.

And one more thing...  Thanks for the job you do.

It is very interesting to read the rationalizations employed by cops.  I wonder if, throughout history, any other groups of armed and organized men have similarly fooled themselves.

RE: Gated doors, does anyone else recall the widow who had her front door reinforced by her son, only to have the keystone kops of her area use explosives to break it down in their "fun" wrong-house raid?

Lord help me, I will feel joy when someone successfully defends themself against a wrong-house raid by killing an officer or two.

Oh, and there will be no real answer to Brohawk's question of how to minimize the chances of being the target of a wrong-house raid.  The cops are not in business to spread word of how to defend one's self from their tactics.

I'm suprised that nobody has caught this yet, but how many people think that some guy selling bits of plants on the street corner is scarier then armed (possibly unidentified) men breaking into your home at night?

And just to cover my ass, I have the highest respect for cops and the job that they do, but I disagree with the war on (some) drugs and some of the tactics being used to fight it.

I will fully agree that the majority of cops I have met are good people who joined the force because they genuinely want to help their communities. That's a purely unscientific observation, but I think it applies to cops as a whole.

On the other hand, cops shouldn't be surprised at the hostility, or that most of it comes from issues related to the drug war. Many police departments around the nation are dependent upon drug-related seizures for items of basic budget. In other words, if they don't seize enough property with drugs as the excuse, then cops will lose their jobs. It is a conflict of interest that wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else in government and is tailor-made to produce abuses.

In addition, every police department is encouraged to apply for all sorts of nifty ex-military gear for their SWAT teams -- and they even hold SWAT team competitions. I like those kinds of toys just as much as they do, but the fact is that most departments don't have all that much real use for them, and they do tend to encourage a macho "bring out the artillery" attitude that really isn't appropriate.

The police also tend to heavily support drug prohibition which directly causes a lot of these problems (read your history, most of these problems were basically unknown before drug prohibition). You know, little problems like little old ladies being killed. (Not that this was the first time, by any means.)

Like I said, I think most cops are good guys who want to do the right thing and will bend over backwards to try to do it. And I am certainly glad that they have chosen to do a job that I wouldn't do on a bet.

At the same time, those cops should take a good honest look at the policies that continually cause them these PR problems. I would bet that, if we had a better drug policy, and promoted the idea that cops should take a less militaristic approach to their own communities, much of this criticism would be gone in a heartbeat.

Just to give you some perspective -- in the Netherlands, cops take a completely different attitude toward policing drugs. They don't view themselves as on a mission to punish drug users and dealers, but rather as a means to bring them into the greater net of social services that can solve those problems. As a result, if there is a drug dealer who is peddling bad smack that is killing people, they can go to the addicts themselves and the addicts will help them locate the dealer and put him in jail.

And also FYI, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Portugal (just to name a few) are coming to the same conclusions. That's one reason why we have more people in jail for just drug offenses than the European Union has in jail in total.

Better a few cops standing around in the street for a few hours than killing innocent people.



If the cops don't have the evidence to make a conviction, then they don't have the evidence to go busting in with hand grenades and machine guns. That tactic actually creates the potential for even more deaths -- as the statements of honest gun owners here will attest.

As for barricading themselves -- let them. They aren't going anywhere if the SWAT team surrounds them.



Not according to the chiefs of police I talked to. You can see lots of things on the street that might look like a drug sale. You don't have cause to go busting in with hand grenades and putting both civilians and cops in danger unless the evidence is better than some casual observations.



Well, actually, it is. A big rush of testosterone and all, and you get to go to all those SWAT team competitions where they do it for fun -- even though the majority of those SWAT teams are never used for anything but the fun competitions. And, they aren't taking their life in their hands if they use different tactics.



Tell it to the fifty or so chiefs of police, along with an equal number of their top drug enforcement officers who were there at the conference and all agreed that no-knocks were not warranted for drug busts.

Guys , the selling of "little bits of plants on street corners" is not really what I am talking about. In my area 95% of ALL Search Warrants are ran on Crack and Meth dealers. Also we rarely see someone dealing Pot that is not also sell some other more powerful drugs. Yes , there are a few large level "Pot only" dealers that get hit , but it is rare. We just don't have the time or resources to mess with Weed. Also please keep in mind that "proof" is not always allowed in court , you must have Evidence! I have even had a Judge state to me " Officer, don't tell me your proof , show me your evidence".  

And for the record , I do not agree with the "War on Drugs" and the current tactics used to fight it. We lost the "War" a long time ago , we are in a "Containment Mode" at this point in every large city in this country.

Just FYI, there was a time in our history when cocaine was sold over the counter, without any age restrictions and was even included in Coca-Cola (how do you think it got its name?) and Pepsi-Cola ("pep" - "coke" get it?). Even under those extreme conditions, we didn't have the problems with it we do today. If you are really interested, you can read an interesting history of the subject at [url]http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm[/url]

As far as the evidence goes, if you don't have enough evidence for a conviction, then you don't have enough evidence to go busting down doors with machine guns and hand grenades. Not that busting down doors is really a good tactic, even if you do have the evidence. As the law-abiding gun owners here will tell you, that is more likely than anything to trigger a shootout if you hit the wrong house.

Let me lead a round of applause for your good sense. Try reading that link I provided above and I think it will give you some really good ideas of what we could do better -- particularly as it regards our sometimes shaky relationship with our own police.

Interesting company you keep...

"The Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet)
Mission Statement"




[url]http://www.drcnet.org/aboutdrc/[/url]



This isn't about SWAT at all, is it?  It's about legalizing drugs...

[img]http://www.norml.org/images/conf2003/woody_harrelson_2.jpg[/img]



[edited to get it all right...]

Kinda, but the two are closely related, since most of the SWAT raids (and nearly all of these botched raids) are looking for drugs and drug dealers. Still, I was hoping to mention this without hijacking the whole thread into another War on Drugs debate.

Yeah, it is a hijack, though it really gets at the heart of the matter.  LE is enforcing the laws that much of the public wants.

And I wouldn't want any of it in my neighborhood, would you?  

Obviously, that's an easy question to answer if it's a crack house, but what if it's "just" a pot dealer?  Personally, I'd still want them as far away from me and my family as possible.

While agree that peopole should be held accountable, this has to be put in perspective.

I imagine that these mistakes, while certainly regrettable, occur *very* rarely.  They just happen to get big press.

Compared to, say, the number of children accidentlly killed with guns, the number of people harmed by botched SWAT-style raids is almost non-existent.  

What are we going to do about those kids?

[url]http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr49/nvsr49_08.pdf[/url]