FYP

Fair to say i don't see the equivalence.

Meanwhile they're destroying evidence, killing hostages, etc.

I know you read "search" and immediately shrugged and thought "drugs" but this is crap. Imagine the possibility that we actually need to get in and don't have time for a "smoke em out" operation.

Suppose a 7yr old girl's life depends on an entrance into that residence.

Can you enter any residence you want at any time?

No, of course not. Can you?

If the police restricted searches to things like that, there would be a lot fewer problems. Kicking in doors to save lives is a lot different than kicking in doors to stop people from destroying the evidence of a victimless crime.

Just saying something like this should be in the playbook and used when appropriate.

But just for the sake of argument, what percentage of search warrants would you say are issued because you guys have probable cause to believe there are drugs in the house?

What percentage of search warrants are issued because you guys have probable cause to believe that a 7 year old girl is currently being murdered in the house?

Upon further thought, a better more realistic way to handle this would be to quietly sit on the house until the occupants leave. Covertly follow them and jump out on them when they're pumping gas or walking into 7-11 or something (or just do a car stop 3 blocks away, whichever poses less risk). Take the people by surprise when they're not on their home turf, then do a nice calm quiet search of the house. This way there's no chance for any kind of hostage situation to develop.

From everything I've seen/read about drug warrants, cops try to make sure they hit the house while their target is there. It would make much more sense to just follow the target and hit the house when you know he's not there. That way you don't have to do the full-on commando raid to seize 4 ounces of meth.

I agree.

The point of that post was essentially to correct the thinking that it's ALL drug busts, which isn't true.

I don't have hard numbers available, but I strongly believe with me personally I served more arrest warrants with SRT than search warrants.

We had a "Risk Assessment Tool" that administrators used at our agency, which is becoming more and more common where an individuals criminal affiliations are calculated, as well as criminal history, and many other factors, such as layout of the property, number of people we estimate to be inside and it calculates the most likely level of force needed to control a situation based on a database of like 1M and growing tactical entries.

It recommends how many people may be needed, whether K9 should merely be on scene or "in the stack" and several other tactical recommendations.

SWAT Statistical Analysis. The wave of the future IMO.

Even with arrest warrants, wouldn't it be much safer and easier just to take the guy when he leaves the house to go to the liquor store or whatever?

I would imagine that even with a 1M sample, the frequency of incidents where things go really bad for the cops would be far too small to get any sort of accurate idea of what the minimum necessary force actually is. How often do cops show up to serve a warrant with too few guys and walk into a slaughter? Maybe once in that 1M sample?

Nationwide IDK. In my specific area, SRT was typically only called out on a meth lab, because of the dangers associated with it, the typical presence of boobie traps and the quickness with which the residence must be cleared for fire and HAZMAT personnel once entry was made.

For weed and stuff like that it was typically just a team of 3-4 narcs who went out, knocked on the door, ID'd themselves as cops and served the search warrant.

It's a 2 sided issue. Obviously the number of drug search warrants is vastly higher, but the number of drug warrants served by SRT v situations where someone is in danger is going to close the gap, since SRT does not routinely involve themselves in these situations. I can't really go into the specifics over an open forum but I believe you would truly be impressed at what one of our investigators had to go through to get SRT support. All this "I HAS A DOPE WARRANTZ" you see going on in other jurisdictions wasn't really a part of my experience. Here you had to articulate to the commanders that it's a drug search warrant and ________, so it changed the situation.

I agree, but the issue is that's only gonna work if they have no idea they're under investigation. If they know they're under investigation/surveillance, everything will be brought in.

I covered your first point above. To this point, we're not just calculating officer safety, but everyone's safety. Any time someone gets hurt during a tactical entry, it's a failure. Doesn't matter whether it's a cop, target, 3rd party or bystander. They call us "Special Oprrations" because that's what's expected of SRT.

From a tactical standpoint, a Bell Curve exists with the number on scene. Too few, you're understaffed and could put cops in danger. Too many and you create unnecessary cluster****s, which are equally dangerous.

Every operation has an ideal number if participants. Go over, the target has been shown statistically to lash out. Go under, cops are at risk.

LOL. Are most of these guys so dumb that even when they know they're under investigation/surveillance, you still have a reasonable chance of finding drugs in their house when you do go ahead and hit them.

Speaking as a reasonable person, If I knew I was under investigation and surveillance for drug actvities, by the time you did get around to serving the warrant, my house, my car and anywhere else I spend time would be as clean as a whistle.

I was addressing the arrest warrant issue. In most cases yes, if they know they're under investigation a search warrant is pretty much worthless.

Sometimes you get surprised by them though.....

RISK assessment tool = iRobot

Making a scene

The catch-line for the original television commercials was "I''ve fallen and I can't get up." Lots of people thought it was pretty funny, but at the same time realized that it reflected a deep concern, that older folks living on their own needed a way to summon help if something bad happened. Well, something bad happened to Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.

From the New York Times:

Somehow the uncle, Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., a former Marine who had heart problems and wheezed if he walked more than 40 feet, triggered his Life Alert pendant. The Life Alert operator came on the loudspeaker in his one-bedroom apartment, asking: “Mr. Chamberlain, are you O.K.? All of this is recorded.

Mr. Chamberlain didn’t respond. So the operator signaled for an ambulance. Police patrol cars fell in behind — standard operating procedure in towns across America....
><snip><
....By the end of the encounter, he had indeed fallen and he couldn't get up. That's because they put two bullets in his chest.

My kind of crooked cop. He probably spent the bulk of his shift sleeping in his parked car. They got him because one the plates he called in was a guy with a fugitive warrant, they found out he never pulled the car over in the first place, then they started going back over all his previous stuff with a fine tooth comb. I can really get behind this level of laziness. Bureaucrats, not paramilitary. Just quietly ride out that 20 to a full pension.

To show the asinine nature of this post, let me rewrite it:

DblBarrelJ is out on patrol one afternoon, sees a car with a broken taillight, stops the car for a broken taillight. DblBarrelJ walks up, asks for his drivers license, goes back to his car.
><snip><
By the end of the traffic stop, the man lay dead in the street. Over a traffic stop. For a busted taillight.

Do you see how the possibility exists that I'm excluding a great deal of highly relevant information in that story?

Yeah, but if you follow the link you can see that the snipped out stuff is... well, it's not there.

But then you can go to the original NYT article where you can learn that, um, it isn't there either.

I told y'all this was a bad idea...

Drone crashes into SWAT Truck during police test near Houston

Did it assassinate anyone?

I think they were trying to assassinate the Houston press. Fail.

It's called an excerpt. Proper netiquette dictates that I post an excerpt containing the gist of the post along with the link rather than re-posting the entire post. If the excerpt piques anyone's interest they are free to follow the link for more details. If not, they are free to ignore it.

The gist of this story is that LEO's were called to assist on a welfare check, and when told they weren't needed by the man they were supposedly there to help, ended up breaking into that man's home and shooting him to death.

Care to comment on the substance of the story or are you just here to toss insults like a troll?

The snipped out part is the most important part, and it can't be found in the article you linked to or the original NYT story.

Sure, I'll comment, but IDK why.

If they did what you say they did, they're wrong and deserving of prosecution.

Something tells me they didn't do what you claim though, otherwise cited statements from witnesses and investigators would be cited in place of vague innuendo and open ended accusations.