SWAT Team Overuse Endangers the Innocent, Says Author

WASHINGTON—The line between military combat forces and civilian policing has been eroding in the last 30 years. SWAT teams are ubiquitous in urban centers, and even prevalent small towns, suburbs and exurbs. Our cops get military training and use equipment designed for war. Many in law enforcement are fine with this trend. Others are disturbed by the change in the character of civilian police.

Speaking on Capitol Hill July 24 at an event sponsored by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, Radley Balko made the case that this trend has led to numerous tragic outcomes of innocent people killed in SWAT raids. According to him, police typically show little remorse. They are unwilling to change procedures to avoid the same mistakes. Further, the SWAT team raids challenge the guarantee of the Fourth Amendment that one’s home is a sanctuary and an individual can protect himself from intruders.

Balko wrote the Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, published July 9. He argues that policies begun in the Nixon-era war on drugs have blurred the difference between soldier and police officer.

Balko wrote “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America,” published by Cato in 2006. His evidence comes mostly from culling local newspaper accounts of botched SWAT team raids.

A long tradition that Balko traced back to the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) prohibits using the military for civilian policing. The mindset of a soldier and a policeman were regarded as totally different. The formation and proliferation of SWAT teams has been a breach in that tradition, he says.

Excessive Force

Balko gave examples of innocent people being killed in SWAT raids.

In “Overkill,” he began with the case of Anthony Diotaiuto in Sunrise, Fla.

Diotaiuto, bartender and part-time student, sold an ounce of marijuana to an informant. Aside from a conviction for possession when he was 16, he had no criminal record or history of violence, wrote Balko.

A SWAT team came at 6:15 a.m. to his home to serve a search warrant. They broke down the front door and used a flash grenade designed to disorient. A few moments later, Diotaiuto lay dead in a bedroom closet from 10 bullets. The police said they found two ounces of marijuana. By the time of the jury trial, that was determined to be 16 grams, a little more than half an ounce.

Accoridng to Balko, the police said they announced themselves before breaking down Diotaiuto’s door. They said he fled to the bedroom for a handgun, and initially said he pointed the gun at the officers. Later, the Sunrise police spokesperson said simply that the weapon was found next to the body.

Balko’s point was that the SWAT team raid was overkill. If Diotaiuto had known the intruders were police it is unlikely that he would have fled to his bedroom to arm himself, given the small amount of marijuana in his possession, he wrote.

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