Radley Balko just wrote this story about the Little Rock Police Department possibly serving every single search warrant with a SWAT Team. This is frightening at a level difficult to imagine. The police are already out of control, criminal, and brutal for little if any reason, but this kind of force and destruction is not warranted.
As Radley Balko describes:
“Last fall, I published an investigation into the way the Little Rock Police Department has been serving its drug warrants. The piece explored three general allegations: First, the LRPD has been serving drugs warrants with extraordinarily powerful explosives that other SWAT veterans told me are wholly inappropriate.”
“Second, there’s irrefutable video evidence that one LRPD informant and his police handlers were misleading about their investigation into a man named Roderick Talley. There’s also persuasive evidence that they did the same in other cases as well.”
“Finally, when I reviewed nearly 100 drug warrants from the past several years, I noticed that nearly all of them were for no-knock raids. To get a no-knock warrant, the police must provide specific evidence that the suspect is dangerous, or a threat to destroy evidence if police were to observe the knock-and-announce rule. The LRPD officers were offering no such evidence. Instead, they were using boilerplate language about how all drug suspects are dangerous and/or a threat to destroy evidence. The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that such boilerplate language is not sufficient. Therefore, every one of these raids was illegal. Worse yet, Little Rock judges were signing off on these warrants, in spite of the law.”
This is a nightmare. This exposes criminal behavior by police in Little Rock, Arkansas, behavior that includes lying, falsifying evidence, illegal searches, using dangerous explosives on private residences, among other nefarious activity. It also shows the colluding judges to be corrupt as well.
What most Americans don’t know, or don’t care to know, is that police in this now fascist oligarchy called America are prosecuting over 80,000 no-knock SWAT raids a year. That is 220 of these heinous raids every single day. And it is getting worse.
Most of these are for drug warrants, although very many are conducted at the wrong address, and often turn into great harm or death of innocent people. Most all drug “crime” attended to by police are for circumstances where there is no victim. Victimless “crimes” make up approximately 86% of all those incarcerated in the U.S. In other words, these so-called criminals never harmed another person or their property. This is why the immoral war on drugs has caused the U.S. to have the highest prison population ever to exist in the world. And this is supposed to be a free country.
In Little Rock, there is evidence currently being researched by Balko that would show that every warrant served there is by use of a SWAT team. That would be reason enough not to live in such a place! Force and brutality by police at this level is insane, and will get worse if allowed to continue.
How many innocent people and their pets will have to be shot before the people wake up and put a stop to these military style raids by police? Using extreme force to serve warrants can only lead to more and more abuse, and more brutal conflict between citizens and corrupt police. This needs to stop!
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