Word: swatting
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...Salvatore Culosi Jr., a 37-year-old optometrist: Killed by a SWAT team member while standing unarmed outside his house. He was under investigation for gambling with friends...
...Cheryl Lynn Noel, a church-going mother: Shot and killed after grabbing her legal handgun when masked intruders—a SWAT team—stormed into her bedroom in Baltimore. The justification for the assault? Police investigators had found marijuana seeds in the family’s trash...
...Accelyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister in Boston: Died of a heart attack after a SWAT team broke into his house and chased him. As a police source subsequently told the Boston Herald, "Everything was done right, except it was the wrong apartment." Oops...
...militarization of domestic law enforcement began with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)—that bastion of honest police work—and has gradually spread throughout the country. Now 70 percent of U.S. municipalities have SWAT units, and in cities with over 50,000 people, the number rises to 90 percent. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a dramatic escalation in the number of SWAT team deployments—over 50,000 last year, according to Professor Peter Kraska at Eastern Kentucky University. That’s 137 raids...
...SWAT teams—originally called "Special Weapons Attack Teams"—are designed to deal with special, highly dangerous threats such as hostage takings. These paramilitary raids are usually done in conjunction with a no-knock warrant, which gives the police the right to forcibly enter a private home without announcing themselves. Although these teams and tactics might be justified in very dangerous situations, the last time I checked the U.S. doesn’t have 137 daily hostage takings. Instead, as the numbers suggest, SWAT teams are used for routine police work, especially drug arrests...