Shocking ACLU Report! Dangerous Militarization' Of U.S. Law Enforcement

U.S. law enforcement at all levels has undergone a dangerous militarization in recent years, with heavily armed SWAT teams being deployed to serve warrants and for drug searches, but rarely for the hostage situations they were designed for, the American Civil Liberties Union says in a new report.

The ACLU says its investigation corroborates the unnecessary use of a proliferation of Special Weapons and Tactics teams made possible by federal programs that incentivize aggressive weapons and battlefield tactics at the local level.

The study looked at 800 SWAT deployments among 20 local, state and federal police agencies in 2011-2012.

“Using these federal funds, state and local law enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs, the battlegrounds of which have disproportionately been in communities of color. But these arsenals are by no means free of cost for communities,” , senior counsel with the ACLU’s Center for Justice.

The ACLU’s report highlights a number of cases where it says the use of SWAT teams led to unnecessary deaths and injuries, and (in 2006) put out by the libertarian Cato Institute that showed much the same trend.

The report cited numerous incidents where the use of a SWAT team appears to have caused unnecessary injuries,

—including a 2010 case in Detroit where a 7-year-old girl was shot dead after police threw a flash grenade into her home, burning her. More recently, a 19-month-old boy in Georgia is still fighting for his life after police threw a flash grenade into his playpen during a drug raid last month. Police later found the suspect they were looking for at a different house, and he surrendered peacefully.

— Jose Guerena, a 26-year-old Iraq War veteran, whose wife heard a noise that turned out to be a SWAT team. Guerena “picked up his rifle, with the safety on, and went to investigate. A SWAT team fired 71 shots at Guerena,

Among the ACLU’s findings:

— 62 percent of SWAT raids were for the purpose of conducting drug searches.

— Just 7 percent of SWAT raids were “for hostages, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”

— SWAT raids are directed disproportionately against people of color — 30 percent of the time the “race of individual people impacted” was black, 11 percent of the time Latino, 20 percent white and 30 percent unknown.

— Armored personnel vehicles that local law enforcement agencies have received through grants from the Department of Homeland Security are most commonly used for drug raids and not school shootings and terrorist situations.

— In cases in which police cited the possible presence of a weapon in the home as a reason for utilizing a SWAT team, weapons were found only 35 percent of the time.

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