angelatc
10-12-2016, 06:45 PM
“DO NOT RESIST”: THE POLICE MILITARIZATION DOCUMENTARY EVERYONE SHOULD SEE (https://theintercept.com/2016/10/12/do-not-resist-the-police-militarization-documentary-everyone-should-see/)
The hope was to be on-hand for an incident in which a SWAT team’s use of heavy weapons would be unquestionably warranted. “I thought the whole time I would be able to show something that would kind of reflect the entire scope of what a SWAT officer might go through sometimes, where you actually do need the equipment,” Atkinson explained.
Instead, the filmmaker repeatedly found himself watching police with military-grade weaponry executing dubious search warrants. The frequency of the raids was particularly shocking, with one of the officers in the film claiming his team does 200 such operations a year. By comparison, Atkinson notes, his father performed a total of 29 search warrant raids over his entire 13 years in SWAT — according to some estimates (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/?utm_term=.6428475e70ec), SWAT teams now carry out between 50,000 to 80,000 raids across the country annually.
“The search warrants, we’re told, are always used for massive drug dealers and kingpins, and then we run in these homes and we never found anything,” Atkinson said.
Super long article and a video trailer at the link: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/12/do-not-resist-the-police-militarization-documentary-everyone-should-see/
The hope was to be on-hand for an incident in which a SWAT team’s use of heavy weapons would be unquestionably warranted. “I thought the whole time I would be able to show something that would kind of reflect the entire scope of what a SWAT officer might go through sometimes, where you actually do need the equipment,” Atkinson explained.
Instead, the filmmaker repeatedly found himself watching police with military-grade weaponry executing dubious search warrants. The frequency of the raids was particularly shocking, with one of the officers in the film claiming his team does 200 such operations a year. By comparison, Atkinson notes, his father performed a total of 29 search warrant raids over his entire 13 years in SWAT — according to some estimates (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/?utm_term=.6428475e70ec), SWAT teams now carry out between 50,000 to 80,000 raids across the country annually.
“The search warrants, we’re told, are always used for massive drug dealers and kingpins, and then we run in these homes and we never found anything,” Atkinson said.
Super long article and a video trailer at the link: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/12/do-not-resist-the-police-militarization-documentary-everyone-should-see/