WATCH: Florida Sheriff's Creepy Tough Guy Video Threatens Heroin Dealers

As part of his effort to fight heroin trafficking, Lake County, Florida, Sheriff Peyton Grinnell has released a video pledging to go after drug dealers, but the effort from the sheriff’s “Community Engagement Unit” is both creepy and wrong-headed.

[image:1 align:left]The video features the sheriff surrounded by four masked officers, their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, their torsos protected by bullet-proof vests, wearing the olive green pants of the military—not the blue of law enforcement. They look like some sort of paramilitary hit squad, and that’s what Sheriff Grinnell promises they will be.

“To the dealers that are pushing this poison, I have a message for you,” the glowering sheriff warns. “We’re coming for you. As a matter of fact, our undercover agents have already bought heroin from many of you….To the dealers, I say: Enjoy looking over your shoulder, constantly wondering if today is the day we come for you. Enjoy trying to sleep tonight as you wonder if tonight’s the night our SWAT team blows your door off its hinges.”

The message is presumably designed to be reassuring for the good citizens of Lake County, but the sheriff’s promise of increased resort to paramilitarized, high-intensity, middle-of-the-night drug raids is anything but, given the record of SWAT raid errors over the years.

The New York Times recently reported that in the past six years alone, at least 81 civilians and 13 cops have been killed in “dynamic entry” raids, oftentimes after police obtained a “no-knock” warrant allowing them to bust in a door and go in heavy without warning. And as the Washington Post noted in a roundup of SWAT raid mishaps last fall, such mistakes—sometimes fatal—continue to occur with depressing regularity.

But even when no one is killed and no headlines are made, mistaken SWAT raids corrode public confidence. Families whose children are subjected to screaming masked intruders kicking their doors down in the middle of the night and pointing guns at their heads are likely to be traumatized for years even if the cops say “sorry.”

Bad raids happen for a variety of reasons. An informant may lie to score points with the cops. The cops might hit the wrong address by mistake. Or they may hit the right address, but without necessary information about who they may encounter, as was the case with the notorious 2014 Georgia raid where a SWAT member threw a flashbang grenade into a baby’s crib and blew a hole in the 19–month-old’s chest, nearly killing him. (Police in this case were also acting on a bad informant’s tip.)

Heroin is a serious problem, and it is illegal. We expect police to enforce the law, but there has to be a better way than treating drug suspects like they’re ISIS terrorists or Iraqi insurgents. What ever happened to” “We’ve got the place surrounded. Come out with your hands up!”?

Here’s the video: