disorderlyvision
05-13-2009, 12:02 PM
Originally created to deal with emergency or other very-high intensity situations (e.g. snipers, hostages, barricaded suspects), SWAT teams were deployed on fewer than 3,000 occasions in all of 1980. Today, SWAT teams conduct raids more than 50,000 times per year, mostly while doing low-level drug enforcement. This is dangerous, hurtful and wrong.
Please sign the "Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform" to limit SWAT team use to the true emergency or high-intensity situations for which they were created -- SWAT teams should be available but rarely used. When you're done, please visit http://www.swatreform.org to watch our video, "SWAT Raids -- No One Is Safe" and for more information about this issue. Then, please spread the word so others can see the video and sign the petition too.
Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform
Required text:
(This text will be included in your message)
Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform
Originally created to deal with emergency or other very-high intensity situations (e.g. snipers, hostages, barricaded suspects), SWAT teams were deployed on fewer than 3,000 occasions in all of 1980. Today, SWAT teams conduct raids more than 50,000 times per year, mostly while doing low-level drug enforcement.
This is wrong. Every time police enter a home with sudden, overwhelming force in the way that SWAT teams are trained to do, a trauma is caused to the people inside from which they may never recover. Many of the buildings targeted house completely innocent people -- roommates, spouses, children, victims of wrong address reports -- and the vast majority are low-level offenders at worst.
Even more troubling, using a SWAT team when a situation is not already close to violence risks creating an altercation that could otherwise have been avoided. Reports have detailed numerous cases in which unarmed people were shot by police officers who had become trigger happy due to the rush of doing a dynamic entry. In some cases police officers have themselves been killed doing SWAT raids, by people inside who were taken by surprise and who in fear of losing their lives opened fire. Reports of SWAT officers killing pets are common.
The overuse of SWAT teams is an injustice that shatters the peace of communities rather than protecting them; and the rationale behind most SWAT raids -- fighting the drug war -- is a weak one, given the failure of supply-side enforcement to reduce the availability of drugs. We the undersigned therefore call for:
• the limiting of SWAT team deployments to emergency or otherwise very-high intensity situations;
• for changes in the way criminal justice funding is allotted, in order to focus on public safety needs rather than arrest numbers;
• for modification of other policies that have encouraged the overuse of SWAT teams;
• for detailed reporting on the activities of SWAT teams and their results; and
• for policymakers at the federal and state levels to consider the detailed recommendations on this issue appearing at http://www.swatreform.org.
SWAT teams should be available but rarely used. Please take action to fix this problem, in the states and across the nation, for the sake of safety, good policing and basic fairness.
(Citations backing up the statements made in this petition can be found at http://www.swatreform.org.)
Please sign the "Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform" to limit SWAT team use to the true emergency or high-intensity situations for which they were created -- SWAT teams should be available but rarely used. When you're done, please visit http://www.swatreform.org to watch our video, "SWAT Raids -- No One Is Safe" and for more information about this issue. Then, please spread the word so others can see the video and sign the petition too.
Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform
Required text:
(This text will be included in your message)
Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform
Originally created to deal with emergency or other very-high intensity situations (e.g. snipers, hostages, barricaded suspects), SWAT teams were deployed on fewer than 3,000 occasions in all of 1980. Today, SWAT teams conduct raids more than 50,000 times per year, mostly while doing low-level drug enforcement.
This is wrong. Every time police enter a home with sudden, overwhelming force in the way that SWAT teams are trained to do, a trauma is caused to the people inside from which they may never recover. Many of the buildings targeted house completely innocent people -- roommates, spouses, children, victims of wrong address reports -- and the vast majority are low-level offenders at worst.
Even more troubling, using a SWAT team when a situation is not already close to violence risks creating an altercation that could otherwise have been avoided. Reports have detailed numerous cases in which unarmed people were shot by police officers who had become trigger happy due to the rush of doing a dynamic entry. In some cases police officers have themselves been killed doing SWAT raids, by people inside who were taken by surprise and who in fear of losing their lives opened fire. Reports of SWAT officers killing pets are common.
The overuse of SWAT teams is an injustice that shatters the peace of communities rather than protecting them; and the rationale behind most SWAT raids -- fighting the drug war -- is a weak one, given the failure of supply-side enforcement to reduce the availability of drugs. We the undersigned therefore call for:
• the limiting of SWAT team deployments to emergency or otherwise very-high intensity situations;
• for changes in the way criminal justice funding is allotted, in order to focus on public safety needs rather than arrest numbers;
• for modification of other policies that have encouraged the overuse of SWAT teams;
• for detailed reporting on the activities of SWAT teams and their results; and
• for policymakers at the federal and state levels to consider the detailed recommendations on this issue appearing at http://www.swatreform.org.
SWAT teams should be available but rarely used. Please take action to fix this problem, in the states and across the nation, for the sake of safety, good policing and basic fairness.
(Citations backing up the statements made in this petition can be found at http://www.swatreform.org.)