forgiveness

Wives who stay with husbands who have done wrong, no matter if it is a crime or not, are an object of mystery. How can they possibly forgive him?

A husband who hired prostitutes? A wife who gambled away the college savings? A husband who regularly shows up drunk at the high school ball games? I would never forgive my husband if he did that...or that...or that.

While many stand in judgment, others watch in admiration, wishing they could be so forgiving as if we have done something heroic. Forgiveness of someone dear to us is not heroic; it is ordinary. Marriage is a constant state of forgiveness. His snoring, her cooking, his bad jokes, her constant tardiness. Not a day goes by without one of us forgiving something.

I was asked how I came to forgive my husband because he did something so bad. Forgiving someone we love is what love does.

It was the day I said, "At least my husband didn't invade someone's house with his weapon drawn while knowing children were in the house" that I realized I am not forgiving where forgiveness is difficult. If my husband treated someone the way ICE treated us...could I forgive him that? If my husband's job depended on him throwing homes and families into chaos...could I forgive him that?

I have not forgiven the ICE agents or the prosecutor. Forgiving a stranger, now...that is something different. I am not accustomed to small daily forgivenesses of their small faults. I cannot look at them and remember the good things they have done that balance out what they did to us. All I know of them is their bad actions.

Ephesians 4:32 says, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

The reminder that God has forgiven me makes me ashamed of holding tight to my own anger with the ICE agents and the prosecutor. If God forgives me even when I have done little to deserve forgiveness, who am I to withhold forgiveness of someone who has wronged me?

I have some work ahead of me.

another search, another death...and no effect on supply or demand

Radley Balko the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, tells yet another story like many others he has told. He quotes from a news story about the killing of Derek Cuice:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said. 

 Balko writes:

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

Those who have been through a home invasion by the cops will recognize the truth in this. When law enforcement shows up wearing Kevlar and with weapons drawn, they are not protecting anyone but themselves. The chaos, no matter how unnecessary, is intentional.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana. [My emphasis.]

Balko sounds frustrated, angry. But after hearing so many stories like this, who isn't? 

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

It is no more difficult to buy pot...than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down... 

Violent, chaotic searches, arrests and convictions, long prison sentences. None of those have slowed down the supply or demand for recreational drugs.

The story is the same with child pornography. As I said here, discussing an interview of a man who had a collection of a million child porn images:

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn. 

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

flash-bang grenade...the cops just couldn't help themselves

When we complain about the chaos and dangers of SWAT-served search warrants or home invasion-style served warrants, we often hear that the person who broke the law is the one to blame for a family's pain, not the cops who invade homes. A Georgia family would love to hear those people make sense of what happened to their 19-month-old boy.

Jacob Sullum writes about a 3 a.m. drug raid when a flash-bang grenade was thrown into a child's playpen, critically injuring the toddler. The police said they had no idea there were children in the home or they would not have used the grenade.

"If there's children involved in a house, we do not use any kind of distraction devices in those houses," [Sheriff]Terrell told AccessNorthGa.com. "We just don't take the chance on it....According to the confidential informant, there were no children. When they made the buy, they didn't see any children or any evidence of children there, so we proceeded with our standard operation."

Standard operation? It is standard to throw flash-bangs where the landing place is not clearly seen?

The lawyer for the family said,

"This is a stay-at-home dad who was out in front of the home, playing with the children on a daily basis. Any surveillance that was done would have revealed there was a father with four children who played in that driveway."

Surveillance?

...the SWAT team was relying on the report of a confidential informant who briefly visited the home on Tuesday night, just a few hours before the raid...

Despite an avowed policy of not using flash-bang grenades when children are present, it seems that neither Terrell's office nor the Cornelia Police Department did anything to investigate that possibility aside from asking the informant, who according to Terrell did not even enter the home. 

So, no surveillance.

Beyond the lack of due diligence on that point, there is the question of whether tossing an exploding, potentially incendiary device into a home that may be full of innocent people in the middle of the night is A-OK as long as you are reasonably sure all those people are 18 or older.

Think about this. Laws are often described in terms of protecting the innocent and yet police take no precautions to protect the innocent or even to ascertain if there are innocents present. 

Remember those people who blame the law-breaker for the chaos? The sheriff is one of them.

Terrell continues to blame [drug]transactions for the horrible injuries police inflicted on a sleeping baby. "The information we had from our confidential informant was there was no children in the home," he told WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta. "We always ask; that determines how we enter the house and the things we do.... Did we go by our training, did we go by the intelligence? Given the same set of circumstances, with the same information dealing with a subject who has known gun charges on him, who is selling meth, they would go through the same procedures...Nothing would change....Had no way of knowing the child was in the house. The little baby [who] was in there didn't deserve this. These drug dealers don't care."

The little baby didn't deserve this? If the grenade had landed on the bed of the baby's mother instead, the mother would have deserved it?

...but he seemed so helpful!

Waco, TX, has found a way to reduce the cost of indigent defense. They worried that applicants were falsifying information when requesting a public defender, so now they investigate to make sure the requester is genuinely indigent.

They send a cop to the homes of defendants seeking to apply for the public defender and have him interview and investigate them.

In fact, there’s such a problem with falsifying information on applications, that a whopping 2 people have been arrested since November.

When put in perspective, you begin to see why Edwards has seen a drop in applications. It might have to do with the fact that people don’t want a police officer coming into their homes and asking them questions.

The a public defender blog quotes the Waco Tribune so we can see what else came of investigating financial circumstances of the applicants:

Carrizales said he has made more than 20 arrests simply from following up with applicants at their homes and finding fugitives with outstanding warrants.

Colyer said the sheriff’s office expected the additional arrests because the investigation of one crime often leads to the discovery of other offenses.

Sure, the investigation of one crime can lead to the discovery of other offenses but this sheriff's detective isn't investigating a crime, he is investigating finances...or so he says when he knocks at the applicant's door.

Poor people who need a public defender may not be able to afford to let this investigator in their homes.

the effect of violence on children and the need to do something about it

In an opinion piece in the Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska US Attorney Deborah Gilg talks about the need to recognize how violence affects children. She writes:

More than half of America’s children and teens are in some way exposed to violence in their homes, schools and neighborhoods every year, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice study. Many are victims of violence themselves, but many more will witness violent crimes or share the trauma when their families, school friends or neighborhoods are targets of violence and abuse. Unfortunately, many of these young people will experience violence from multiple sources, compounding the trauma and its effects. 

The consequences of this kind of exposure can be difficult to measure, but the harm is real.

We know that children and teens exposed to violence are more likely to experience anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They are also more likely to fail at school, be absent from school and experience learning difficulties. These children are also more likely to enter into, and stay in, abusive relationships. They are also at higher risk of going on to commit crimes themselves.

It comes as a surprise to find that I agree so strongly with a US Attorney. Witnessing violence or being in the middle of it can have long-lasting effects on children. We should do more to protect children from violence.

A good place to start for all of us is by listening to young people and being engaged in their lives. 

Well, now...that seems a tepid approach to the problem she describes. Wait, though. She has more:

If you’re interested in learning more about the effects of violence on children, the U.S. Department of Justice has produced a video series Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma, available at www.ovc.gov/pubs/ThroughOurEyes/index.html. The DOJ also has launched the Defending Childhood initiative to address the exposure of America’s children to violence as victims and as witnesses.

A video? I would have preferred a more robust response but she is a busy woman. Maybe she doesn't have time to think of more effective ways to lessen the violence that surrounds children. If it isn't too presumptuous of me to think that I can help, I came up with a few ideas. Maybe she can use her powerful voice as US Attorney to promote ideas that would have a more immediate impact on reducing violence than, say, a video.

Stop shooting the family dog. When I was small, I witnessed a neighbor drive over and kill one of our dogs. It was an unfortunate accident but it was a terrible thing for a small child to see. Imagine how terrifying it must be for children to see a law enforcement officer--someone who is supposed to protect and serve--shoot their family dog. 

Stop sending SWAT teams into homes where children are present when that level of force is not necessary. People, including the children, have been hurt and killed in those raids. Watch this video of a SWAT raid in Columbia MO and try to imagine being a child in that home. Radley Balko estimates law enforcement agencies carry out over 100 SWAT raids every day across the country. How many children are affected by violence in their homes perpetrated by law enforcement?

Stop putting so many people in prison. The United States has 2.2 million prison inmates. According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums (famm.org), one in 28 children have a parent in prison. This doesn't count the kids who have a sibling or other family member in prison. How does that affect children? 

Stop relying on mandatory minimum sentences to push a defendant into taking a plea agreement and start proving your cases in court. Introducing mandatory minimum sentences has increased sentence length even for crimes that do not carry a mandatory minimum. Tearing families apart is traumatic for all family members. Tearing them apart for longer than necessary is cruel. 

Children in homes with a drastically reduced income, children with a parent struggling to be everything to everyone--prison spouse, mother and father--in the midst of his or her own grief, children grieving for the family member in prison, children unable to visit the prison because distance and expense are too great...these children suffer a violence that the US Attorney does not address. 

coming home safe at night

When I told our attorney that executing search warrants as a home invasion should not be legal, he told me that if I were the wife of a cop, all I would want is for him to come home safe each night. Since then, my response has been that if I were the wife of a cop, I would not want him to put his safety above those he has sworn to serve and protect.

Which brings us to this article by Radley Balko.

The "war on cops" talk heats up every time that one or more high-profile police killings hit the news. But there's just no evidence that it's true. 

I've pointed out a number of times that the job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a generation. Last year was the safest year for cops since the early 1960s. And it isn't just because the police are carrying bigger guns or have better armor. Assaults on police officers have been dropping over the same period. Which means that not only are fewer cops getting killed on the job, people in general are less inclined to try to hurt them. Yes, working as a police officer is still more dangerous than, say, working as a journalist.

The truth is that farmers, miners, and fishermen are more likely to die in the line of work than law enforcement officers.

Balko says the false belief that cops constantly risk their lives in their work leads to poor policy and poor budget decisions.

For example, one effect of false perceptions about the dangers of policing that I've noted before is that they can sway public debate on issues like police budgets, police use of force, police militarization and what sort of accountability cops should face when they're accused of violating someone's civil rights. Exaggerating the threat that cops face can make policymakers and public officials more reluctant to hold bad cops accountable or more willing to outfit police departments with weapons and equipment better suited for warfare.

Worse:

I interviewed lots of police officers, police administrators, criminologists and others connected to the field of law enforcement. There was a consensus among these people that constantly telling cops how dangerous their jobs are is affecting their mindset. It reinforces the soldier mentality already relentlessly drummed into cops' heads by politicians' habit of declaring "war" on things.

Read the whole thing. The next time law enforcement talks about how dangerous their job is, you'll know better.

good cops wouldn't?

Commenter Our Family is His makes an astonishing assumption, so astonishing that I wondered if I misread her attempt at humor.

Thankfully good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing, so while you were emotionally hurt so much that day and your husband decided to rip your family apart, you were safe that day.

Good cops would have investigated to see if any of us have a history of violence. 
Good cops would have questioned the need to come into my home with their weapons drawn.
Good cops would have waited until the children were out of the house.

Good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing? 

Sometimes the resulting damage, injuries, and deaths have less to do with whether the cops are good or bad than to do with the dangers inherent in drawing weapons in a chaotic situation. Too much chance for unexpected movements or sounds, too much chance for misunderstandings, too much chance for adrenalin to lead to mistakes.

Good cops understand that and avoid creating that chaos.

fear

When the ICE agents left the house after they searched it, they left something behind. Fear.

For months after, I wondered if they had bugged our house. I waited until we were out of the house to discuss my husband's case, just in case. I especially disliked saying anything too personal in our bedroom because I felt as if someone were listening. I checked under the kitchen table to see if they had left a bug there. Does this sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

When I left my office for lunch, I contemplated leaving by another door just in case police were waiting to arrest me. I had done nothing wrong but seeing how easily they could crash into our lives and leave wreckage behind, I felt none of us was safe. Does that sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

When I was stopped for speeding, my hands shook as I talked to the police officer. When I pick up my kids at school and I see the police officer who hangs around there, I recoil. Seeing uniformed officers brings all the terror back to me; the anger, too.

Using my computer to type in my journal, I worried that the agents had installed a key logger on my computer and could see what I was typing, read my mind. They had access to all of our computers that morning and could have installed anything on it. Why did they leave mine behind for me? It isn't as if they were nice people. Does that sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

I used to walk the dog early in the morning but stopped doing that. The idea of leaving my family behind in the house without me was frightening. If I were walking the dog, who would protect them against agents who invade the house again? The morning of the search, an agent had sat in his car on our street, watching our house; a neighbor had seen him and talked to him. The agent had watched me pick up the newspaper from my driveway. I still look up and down the street for unfamiliar cars when I get the newspaper.

Locking the doors and closing the blinds is still almost obsessive for me. The fear that someone could come into my house, that someone could even look into my windows is still there.

The agents ran through my house with their guns drawn. To get my husband to talk, they threatened to come back and take our children away.

This, and worse, much worse, happens every day across the country. The vast majority of crimes being investigated when law enforcement executes search warrants this way are for non-violent crimes. I cannot be the only person left with fear whispering in the back of my mind.

ICE agent arrested for child porn

If you think I'm going to be sympathetic with this guy, you might be surprised.

A former top law enforcement official who helped lead the local crusade against child sexual exploitation was sentenced Friday to a little under six years in prison on a child pornography charge. 

Anthony V. Mangione, who headed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's South Florida office for four years, possessed up to 150 images of child pornography, some depicting the "extreme abuse of children," according to federal prosecutors.

So, it seems that child pornography is addictive. Even ICE agents (and FBI agents) make the mistake of thinking they can satisfy their curiosity and then find themselves unable to leave it alone. Too bad this man couldn't ask for help to break his addiction without getting turned in to law enforcement. 

The FBI and Broward Sheriff's Office seized Mangione's laptop computer in April 2011 after his Internet provider detected him sending child pornography. He quickly retired from ICE and was arrested in September 2011.

This guy earned his living going after child porn users and, because he "quickly retired" from ICE, he will probably have a nice retirement income earned on the backs of those in prison and on the sex offender registry because of his work. 

How many early-morning raids did he approve? How many families broke up under the stress of those raids and the resulting discoveries? How many families deal with the crazy requirements of the sex offender registry because of his work? How many people live under the  Miami Julia Tuttle Causeway because of his work?

Family members and friends wrote letters describing him as a devoted father of three and a dedicated law enforcement officer. 

As the Special Agent in Charge of ICE's South Florida office, Mangione supervised more than 400 employees in nine counties. He was regularly at the forefront of arrests of child pornography suspects, vowing to see them punished.

My heart goes out to his family. This discovery has to be incredibly difficult to deal with. I should know. My sympathy is for them. To be honest, I have a tiny bit of sympathy for anyone leading the double life he lead--unable to ask for help and knowing the certain horror it would be for his family when he was caught. I can guess that like most addicts he never thought he would be caught. 

I hope he has used his time between search and imprisonment as well as my husband has. I hope he has come to terms with what he has done--not only the child porn he used, but the fact that he personally put other families through the same hell his family is going through. Crowing over his downfall is difficult for me, knowing that his family falls with him. 

Perhaps he and his family will become supporters of efforts to abolish the sex offender registry. I could live with that.

how do I feel about the victims of child porn?

I promised I would respond to Liza's comments on how I feel about the victims of child pornography. She said:

I think you are very lucky that you or your kids have never been sexually abused. You have no idea the effect it has on a person. They carry the shame and horror until they die. Every relationship they have is affected. What happens to the family of the perpetrator is not the victim's concern. It's horrible for the family but the victim is what matters. Even if the victim is only in pictures. I assure you that the child in the pictures is the victim in child porn - not the person that looks at it. 

I've read every word you have written. There seems to be no concern for the victims but only for your family. I think if you thought about sexual abused victims, you'd have a easier time with what has happened to your family. You'd understand why all hell as broke loose in your family.

There must be blogs out there that discuss the viewpoint you accuse me of ignoring; this is not one of them. I started this blog to talk about my experience as the wife of a man under investigation for possession of child pornography.

Sexual abuse of a child is wrong, no matter how the child deals with it as a child or as an adult. If a victim grows up to be a lovely, well-adjusted person with no lingering effects of the abuse, the abuse was and is wrong.

I have said before that I cannot imagine what it is like to be a victim of sexual abuse and to find that there are photos of that abuse available on the Internet. While victims can share some responses to their abuse, surely they cannot all react the same way. Every victim has his or her own feelings about the abuse and makes his or her own decisions about how to deal with those feelings. To say they all "carry the shame and horror until they die" is a gross generalization and discounts the individual perspectives of each person involved.

I cannot do anything about how victims deal with the after effects of abuse when I do not know the victim. As much as I would like to wave my magic wand and make things better for all child sexual abuse victims, I am tragically unable to do that. We all are. Putting sex offenders on a registry is not the magic wand, either. Identifying all the sex offenders in the neighborhood does nothing to protect children from the first-time offender.

You say "What happens to the family of the perpetrator is not the victim's concern." If you don't care personally about what happens to the families of sex offenders, that is your choice but when your government is responsible for the bad treatment of sex offenders and their families, it is your concern.

You say, "I assure you that the child in the pictures is the victim in child porn - not the person that looks at it." The child in the pictures is a victim of the person who sexually abuses him or her and of the person who photographs the abuse and distributes it. The person who looks at child porn is victimized by a court system and a society that treats him as if he has committed the abuse in the photos even when he did not.

It is frequently said that the child in the photos is victimized again every time someone looks at the image. If that is true, why are you not angry with the investigators, the prosecutors, the attorneys, the juries and all the other people who look at those images? If simple looking victimizes the child all over again, those people are also victimizers, are they not? Perhaps you mean that any pervert who looks at the images and masturbates while looking...those are the ones victimizing the child again? Here's a surprise: the law does not care if the viewer is masturbating or knitting socks while looking. Masturbation is not the crime. The crime is more specific: Clicking a link to download the image is the crime; possessing the image is the crime. The law does not even care if you look at the images in your possession.

My concern is not only for my family. They are, of course, my first priority (isn't that true for you, as well?) but our concerns should reach far beyond our families.

My concern is for the victims of the war on drugs unemployed because their status as a felon makes them ineligible for hire. My concern is for the sex offenders harrassed, hurt, and killed because they are on the sex offender registry. My concern is for the government budgets straining under the rising cost of incarceration. My concern is for the families who are victimized by law enforcement using SWAT tactics or home invasion tactics to execute search warrants. My concern is for the children who watch cops shoot the family dog during those searches. My concern is for the millions of American citizens who are not allowed to vote. My concern is for the defendants--innocent, even--who are forced to accept a plea agreement because the mandatory minimum sentence waits for them if they don't take the plea.

You said a mouthful when you said I should be glad that my family has not been subject to child sexual abuse. I am glad. My heart goes out to anyone who has to deal with that particular horror. However, child sexual abuse is not the only horror in the world...nor is it even the worst horror.

I will not apologize for focusing on the injustice my family faces.

shooting dogs...but why?

When the ICE agents burst into my home, the first one through the door aimed his gun at our dog. I threw myself at the dog, shouting not to shoot her. I did not think he was only bluffing because I had read about cops shooting dogs during a search. If I had read this article, though, perhaps I wouldn't have thrown myself between the gun and the dog.

When my daughter came downstairs, I asked the agents if she could please put the dog outside. If I had it to over again, I would not do that because it put her in more danger. Too many people shot, too many dogs shot, too many trigger-happy cops.

Radley Balko has again pulled together information demonstrating that law enforcement is out of control in this country. The first concern of law enforcement officers is their own safety. They carry guns, they wear Kevlar, and they think they are the ones in danger.

Our attorney tells me that the prosecutor is a "good guy" just doing his job prosecuting the crimes the feds are told to focus on. I like our attorney so I really want to believe him about this...but it is difficult for me to reconcile what I know of the prosecutor with the attorney's opinion of him.

What do I know? I know only one thing for certain about the prosecutor: He thought it was just fine to send a dozen armed men to invade my home at a time when they knew the children would be home.

Law enforcement wanted the family home when the search warrant was executed or they could have easily done it at a different time. Think about that. They wanted the children there when they came into the home with their weapons drawn, when they aimed a gun at the family dog. They wanted the children to know that their father was in trouble and they chose to do it at a time when the kids would spend all day at school wondering whether their dad would be arrested.

How can a person who approves of that plan be a good guy?

Drugs. If the laws prohibiting illegal drugs were effective, we would have seen proof of it by now. Since it is abundantly clear that the laws haven't slowed down the supply or the incidence of drug use, let's decriminalize the stuff. I've never used illegal drugs but easy (easier?) availability won't make me start now and I'm sure that's true for most people.

Drug law does nothing but fill up our prisons. If you can stomach it, watch this video, read the article and tell me that Columbia MO is better off after this search warrant was executed.

[The police fired] seven rounds into a home just seconds after they'd broken into it. This, despite the fact that there was nothing in the home that posed a lethal threat to them. (Yes, some pit bulls can be dangerous, but not to an armed SWAT team bedecked in full body armor.) One of those rounds missed its intended target (the pit bull) and struck an unintended target (the Corgi). According to Montgomery, there are now bullet holes in the walls of the house. There were other people in that house who weren't suspects, people the cops weren't aware of before they started firing their guns, including a child. That seems like a pretty reckless disregard for human life.

Radley Balko, of the Huffington Post (formerly of Reason magazine), has done extensive reporting on cases like this. I admire his work greatly and I wish he would extend his focus to child pornography cases--if for no other reason than to let the world know that law enforcement uses SWAT teams for most search warrants, not just drugs.

The team that invaded my home used no flash bombs, didn't break down our door, and fired no shots. When I think of how chaotic and terrifying it was for us, I hate to think how the family in Columbia felt.

This is an old piece from 1999 but still worth reading. The writer, Vin Suprynowicz, a Nevada journalist at the time, talks about reactions from police officers who respond to a column he wrote about "the death of 32-year-old Las Vegan John Perrin, who was armed only with a basketball."

The most chilling, though, was probably the lengthy reply of T.B., an officer with the Cleveland police department. T.B. firmly asserts police have every right to shoot unarmed suspects "100 times, if necessary."

The Suprynowicz says 80 of the 118 police officers who responded to him about the column had similar sentiments, using language more or less blunt as that ugly sample. Fortunately, other respondents were more sensible, more aware of their duty to the public. Sgt. Michael O'Malley of Wayne, New Jersey said,

Ultimately, the coroner's jury decided that the officer's very subjective fears, rather than the objective facts, justified the use of deadly force. That is a frightening conclusion for the jury to have reached. It is even more disturbing if it be the standard by which police officers decide between life and death.

After being in the middle of the military-style search warrant execution at my own home, I have to agree: When the cops are sure that their own fears will justify the extreme actions they take, no one is safe.

militarization changes the attitude of the police toward the public

If you watch TV police dramas, you can be forgiven for thinking that executing a search warrant is a civilized event: a couple of detectives knock at the door, explain that they have a search warrant, show the warrant, and then politely go in and look around for what the search warrant says they can look for. That's not the way it works in real life.

Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot--or even switching his rifle off of "safety"--he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the S.W.A.T. team barrage came from a S.W.A.T. team gun, not Guerena's. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home.

Sometimes that is how search warrants are executed. Not so civilized.
As police departments have become more militarized, the attitude of the cops has also become more militarized.

The most serious consequence of the rapid militarization of American police forces, however, is the subtle evolution in the mentality of the "men in blue" from "peace officer" to soldier. This development is absolutely critical and represents a fundamental change in the nature of law enforcement. The primary mission of a police officer traditionally has been to "keep the peace." Those whom an officer suspects to have committed a crime are treated as just that - suspects. Police officers are expected, under the rule of law, to protect the civil liberties of all citizens, even the "bad guys." For domestic law enforcement, a suspect in custody remains innocent until proven guilty. Moreover, police officers operate among a largely friendly population and have traditionally been trained to solve problems using a complex legal system; the deployment of lethal violence is an absolute last resort.

Soldiers, by contrast, are trained to identify people they encounter as belonging to one of two groups -- the enemy and the non-enemy -- and they often reach this decision while surrounded by a population that considers the soldier an occupying force. Once this identification is made, a soldier's mission is stark and simple: kill the enemy, "try" not to kill the non-enemy. Indeed, the Soldier's Creed declares, "I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat." This is a far cry from the peace officer's creed that expects its adherents "to protect and serve."  

To protect and serve...is that idea nothing more than a relic?

how to serve a search warrant

Nineteen years ago today, seventy-six people in the Branch Davidians compound in Waco, Texas, were killed in a fire. The feds tried to execute a search warrant fifty days earlier, resulting in a gun battle killing four Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco agents and six Davidians. After the first day, the Davidians were under siege. In the nineteen years since, the feds haven't learned much about safety of the public during the execution of a search warrant.

A quick search of the internet turned up these instructions for serving a search warrant in Michigan. (We do not live in Michigan.) 

1.Get a search warrant, no-knock search warrant or arrest warrant from a judge. You must demonstrate that you have probable cause to believe a suspect is hiding evidence at his home to get a search warrant. To obtain a no-knock search warrant, you must demonstrate that the suspect is likely to destroy evidence, or injure himself or others, if he knows police officers are at his residence.

2. Enter arrest warrants into computer databases for local, state or federal law enforcement. Serve search warrants at the residence that the warrant allows you to search.

3. Knock on the door of the residence and identify yourself as a police officer unless you have a no-knock warrant. Give the suspect a reasonable amount of time to open the door. When he comes to the door, show him the search warrant before entering the premises.

4.Force the door open if you have a no-knock warrant or if occupants refuse to allow you into the residence. Be prepared for violence if you face this situation.

Perhaps the law is different in my state because those aren't the rules they followed when they served the warrant at our house. "When he comes to the door, show him the search warrant before entering the premises." That's the part that didn't happen. Wearing Kevlar, they pushed their way in, nearly shot our dog, waved guns around, rounded up my family, and only then--after I made multiple demands to see it--did they show me the warrant.

Protect and serve? Not so much. They protected themselves, first and foremost. We weren't armed. We weren't wearing Kevlar. They were.

All this for a non-violent crime and no reason to suspect that any of us would react violently.

"we were here"

After the ICE agents searched our house and left us with a--believe it or not--"Have a nice day," my husband and I found an attorney in the phone book and met with him. It wasn't until later in the day when we noticed things out of place because of the search. 


In our closet, a box of mementos that had been stored on the highest shelf was left open on the floor of the closet though everything else was in its place. In my underwear drawer, an envelope that I keep on the bottom of the draw was left on top of the underwear. My daughter found her journal left open on her bed.


These all felt as if they were messages to us from the agents that they had been there. I believe that the searches are meant to terrorize the families.

trustworthy? No.

Do you know that after law enforcement serves a search warrant, they aren't required to let you know whether they are going to press charges or not? We have been waiting for months and months, at first assuming that they would bring charges, and now wondering if they simply didn't find what they were looking for. It has been over nine months and we've heard nothing.

Our attorney tells us that there is no statute of limitations for this crime, so the prosecution could bring charges at any time...forever. They can simply hold our computers forever, with no need to tell us anything. So, they have our financial records, our family photos, and anything else we stored on computer. I have no confidence that they will keep track of our computers or our files; I have no confidence that they will treat the information found on the computers in a secure manner.

But it's law enforcement! They have rules to follow! I should trust them to treat our digital belongings with every care!

Remember this: The one thing I know for sure about these ICE agents is that they invaded my home with drawn guns. Everything else is just guessing.

death toll of the war on drugs

The War on Drugs is a warning for everyone who thinks that a war on porn is a good idea.

"Increasingly, people are dying because of the tactics of the drug war. Military operations are being conducted on our soil, and collateral damage is inevitable.

"When drug task forces dressed in black batter in doors without knocking or announcing themselves, the danger to citizens and police alike is enormous. Sometimes the greatest danger is to (or from) the innocent citizen that understandably believes that they are experiencing a home invasion, and rushes to defend their family and property."

A dozen cops with guns drawn rushing into a home is bound to lead to misunderstandings, panic, and judgment errors. The police create the chaos and in many--I'd bet most--instances, they have no reason to prepare for violence. The majority of men arrested for possession of child porn have no history with law enforcement other than traffic tickets. Why do police fear violence with people like that?

protect and serve?

The morning they invaded our home, the ICE agents told me what they were looking for and then they "suggested" that I go ahead and take the kids to school. I had no choice. All I could think was that I needed to get the kids out of there. The car was barely out of the driveway when the kids both asked what the cops were looking for. At first I said, "I don't know," but they knew I had been told. I blurted, "Child pornography." My son said, "What's that?"

I blame the ICE agents for anything my son knows about porn. He didn't learn about it from my husband, he learned about it because of the ICE agents.Does he need to be aware of child porn? No, there is no earthly reason children need to know that something that ugly is out there. 

In their zeal to protect children, they have exposed my son to something vile. How can they justify that?