National Guard + 'No Knock' Warrants = Police State?
A few days ago the news covered a story that detailed the calling in of the National Guard to a battered city, New Orleans. I think most people thought, "Oh, they must still have some lawlessness down there that is nothing more than the aftermath of Katrina". In fact, one would be wrong to assume that. The given reason was that there were 6 murders over the course of a single weekend. For a city of that size, depending on who you are, that may sound like a bit much or may sound just about right. By their own admission, they were plagued by violent crime before Katrina even hit. The govenor has the right to call in the National Guard in an emergency situation, but does the murder of 6 people warrant this type of response? Bear in mind that a group of 5 teens were killed in a drug-related incident, while the remaining murder was a result of an argument over beer.
This establishes a most unpleasant precedent. We already know that Blackwater mercenaries (Blackwater is a private security firm whose employees are private mercenaries working over in Iraq) were brought in during Katrina and given authorization by Homeland Security to use lethal force. For now, put aside all the allegations of Posse Comitatus being violated during the Katrina disaster. What we have presently in New Orleans is the military being called in to handle a situation that a) is most certainly not a state of emergency, and b) is certainly within the capability/responsibility of local law enforcement. This is something that should never happen. This can be seen as nothing more than a storming of the Posse Comitatus beachhead.
A few days ago the news covered another story in which the Supreme Court, through it’s ruling, gave police agencies throughout the U.S. the green light to enter your home without first announcing their presence (Note that the Supreme Court waited until Sandra Day O'Connor was out before they pushed this ruling through - she would have been the swing vote in the other direction). I think that most people, after getting over the initial surprise at how this sounds, reflected and thought, "Well, it isn't that much of a change over the way it is now".
There are situations in which it is appropriate to bypass the process of police notification, e.g. a hostage situation. Increasingly, though, the ‘no knock’ approach is being used more often for less volatile situations.
According to an article on Slate by Radley Balko,
“These raids are often launched on tips from notoriously unreliable confidential informants. Rubber-stamp judges, dicey informants, and aggressive policing have thus given rise to the countless examples of "wrong door" raids we read about in the news. In fact, there's a disturbingly long list of completely innocent people who've been killed in "wrong door" raids”
He goes on….
“It's bad enough when the police serve a no-knock warrant at the wrong place. But this is not regular service of a warrant. No-knock raids are typically carried out by masked, heavily armed SWAT teams using paramilitary tactics more appropriate for the battlefield than the living room. In fact, the rise in no-knock warrants over the last 25 years neatly corresponds with the rise in the number and frequency of use of SWAT teams. Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Peter Kraska, a widely cited expert on the "militarization" of domestic police departments, estimates that the number of SWAT team deployments has jumped from 3,000 a year in the early 1980s to more than 40,000 a year by the early 2000s.”
We are already on an increasingly slippery slope with the ‘No Knock’ warrants being approved. If cities start getting even remotely comfortable with the idea of any U.S. military aiding law enforcement, how far are we from the police state that used to scare us when we watched those movies about Russia back in the days of the Cold War?
