Reason Writers Around Town

Radley Balko writes on no-knock raids for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Comments

[Evan!]

We, as a society, give way too much credit and benefit of the doubt to The State. And it's all too easy to go through you daily life like this. Unfortunately, it takes a firsthand experience with some kind of crooked SWAT team raid for most people to really care.

[Juanita]

Sorry, but drug dealers get everything they deserve and more. A few innocent lives are a fair price to protect millions of innocent lives from the scourge of illegal drugs.

[John]

"Sorry, but drug dealers get everything they deserve and more. A few innocent lives are a fair price to protect millions of innocent lives from the scourge of illegal drugs."

WTF? Is that Dan T impersonator out posting under another name? If no knock raids protected anyone, you might have a point.

[R C Dean]

No, John, Juanita is doing her usual masterful job of staying poised on the razor edge between trollery and satire.

[Evan!]

John,

Juanita & Dan T. are different posters, but both are trolls. Juanita is a veteran here - she just returned from her extended vacation to the Troll motherland.

[Ken]

These paramilitary tactics are nuts. I teach criminal justice at a college and the last thing some of these majors need is to be given machineguns and told we are at war with ur own citizens. Police work can be dangerous, and yes we want to protect police, but this can be done without these overly aggressive tactics. In the end of course MORE police offficers are actually hurt because of the military thinking...

[[e-mail]]

Sometimes I eat my stools a little.

[Todd]

I once knew a cop who was on the SWAT team that did the drug raids. He said a couple of guys used to always stay outside and smash up any cars that were in the driveway.

To protect us, mind you.

[Dan T]

According to the article, the raids have killed 40 innocent people in 20 years. That is only 2 people per year. Surely drug use kills more people than that. Therefore, any rational person would be less concerned about ending the SWAT raids than about ending drug use, since the latter is far more dangerous.

[tarran]

You realize that 40 is the number of people that Mr. Balko identified in his research? That the more he looks, the more he finds?

The actual number is probably higher (but not more than an order of magnitude). Nobody has been tracking this systematically.

Of course the only acceptable number is 0. 2 people per year is 2 too many.

[bill]

Cops are assholes, period.

[carrick]

According to the article, the raids have killed 40 innocent people in 20 years. That is only 2 people per year.

That's 2 per year too many.

Surely drug use kills more people than that.

So do car accidents; the flu; allergic reactions to bee stings; etc. Your point here is totaly useless.

Therefore, any rational person would be less concerned about ending the SWAT raids than about ending drug use, since the latter is far more dangerous.

The fact that the government has killed innocent people in the effort to prevent other people from engaging in risky behaviour -- where the true danger of the behaviour is debatable -- is atrocious.

Dan you have gone from being an agressive individual with noteably different world view to a mere parody of yourself. You are no longer contributing value to the discussions or serving your own interests in any positive way.

[anon]

Dan T,
According to your logic why not bring back alcohol prohibition? How about cigarettes? A lot of people die because they are fat. How about a ban on sugar? "This just in, granny shot by SWAT team while holding a loaded Twinkie."

[AnonCowherd]

Quite the contrast between Dan T's comments here and other threads where he professes that human life is too valuable to be risked with smoking, trans fats, etc.

[mediageek]

I agree with Dan T

In fact, I think that we should re-institute confessions forced by beatings and torture. After all, the number of innocent lives saved by such a measure would outweigh the number of innocents who are detained and harmed as a result of such a policy.

[Larry A]

According to the article, the raids have killed 40 innocent people in 20 years. That is only 2 people per year.

That's two innocent people per year. It doesn't count those killed while committing misdemeanors, non-drug related crimes (the gambler, for instance), law enforcement officers, etc. And that's just the no-knock warrants.

Surely drug use kills more people than that.

No. "Drug use" probably kills fewer people than prescription accidents. What kills most of the victims is the war on drugs. In a non-violent setting most overdoses, medical complications, and deaths from polluted drugs wouldn't happen.

Therefore, any rational person would be less concerned about ending the SWAT raids than about ending drug use, since the latter is far more dangerous.

1. People who don't use drugs are far more likely to encounter botched raids or drug war related violence than to overdose.

2. The war on drugs is not ending drug use. After decades there are more drugs, in quantity, quality, variety, potency, and lethality, on the streets than ever before. We have all pain, no gain.

[76]

So Dan, any effort yet? At all?

[Steven Crane]

Do any of you really believe that the actual Dan T. is even posting here anymore?

I like reading things here, but you guys are serious jerks sometimes. It's sort of amazing how long joe has stuck around here, considering the abuse and misrepresentation heaped upon him.

[joe]

Bravo, Mr. Balko.

[Dan T]

Oops, there seems to be a misunderstanding. I'm "Dan T" at "http://centerforadvancedsorgasm.blogspot.com/" -- not "Dan T." (with a period) at http://centerforadvancedsarcasm.blogspot.com/" -- sorry for any confusion.

[NoStar]

Steven Crane,

We like joe. He provides a valuable service to H&R as our token Liberal. Some of us even admit it when we find ourselves agreeing with him. Scoring under 70% on the Worlds Smallest Political Quiz doesn't make one a troll at H&R. That requires a commitment to boorish posting behavior and an obvious intent to stir the pot.

If Dan T. had arrived a few years earlier he might have nailed down the position of the H&R token troll, but Juanita fills that position with a lot more originality and decidedly less predictability than Dan T. has demostrated.

[Stevo Darkly]

Do any of you really believe that the actual Dan T. is even posting here anymore?

There is no way to tell. Except for one or two very recent (yesterday) and blatant "lol, i'm stupid/gay" posts, it's apparently impossible to make a fake "Dan T." post and make it so ridiculous that it can be distinguished from the original.

Come off it, Steven -- Dan T.'s M.O. is to post a facile contrarian remark that deliberately misses the point in order to stir up the natives. Responding to that in the same spirit isn't being a jerk.

Now joe is another breed of cat entirely, IMO -- he represents another point of view, but there is usually some thought and, yea, even a whole philosophy behind it. It's not just facile kneejerk contrarianism all the time. (Okay, maybe occasionally he makes a comment of the latter type sometimes, but not all the time.) joe makes you think. He is capable fo constructing an argument that takes a little thought to counter. Sometimes he even cites facts to back up what he says. Dan T. just wants to provoke.

[Bee]

Jersey McJones was kinda irritating for a while, but way more 3-D than any incarnation of Dan T. And Joe is an excellent regular on HnR. I'd really miss him if he drifted away, and I hope he doesn't. The funniest thing I ever read here was posted many months ago by joe on a baseball topic. I still laugh when I remember it.

Not that joe needs anyone to fight his battles, but I appreciate his sense of humor, his sincerity, his command of English, and his thrashing of sloppy arguments. And he's definitely on the side of right in this topic of Balko's.

Nicely written article, BTW, Mr. Balko.

[J sub D]

Radley: You are rapidly becoming a hero to me. Keep it up.

[J sub D]

Cops are assholes, period.

I really hate writing this, FUCK THE POLICE

[R C Dean]

Not that joe needs anyone to fight his battles, but I appreciate his sense of humor, his sincerity, his command of English, and his thrashing of sloppy arguments. And he's definitely on the side of right in this topic of Balko's.

Ditto that.

[joe]

Steven T.,

I come here because, as a liberal, it's so hard for me to find a fair fight.

At about 12:1, I actually have to start working to win the argument, and I like that.

I suppose I could try to find some action on Free Republic and the like, but we're talking about righties, not libertarians, and the number would have to jump to 90:1. It's just too confusing keeping that many handles straight, especially when they all kinda-sorta sound like characters from the GI Joe cartoon.

[joe]

OK, now I've read the comments after Steven's.

In all seriousness, I feel the same way about many of my sparring partners that you seem to feel about me, and I can say with no hesitation that I have learned a great deal from these opponents, and have even modified by political beliefs based on some of the challenges they've presented me with.

Except for gun control. You're all a bunch of kooks. They totally shouldn't have let the federal ban on belt-fed machine guns being sold in candy stores expire in 2004. I blame Chimpy McBushitler.