DON'T SWAT SUMMIT

Thank you for the story: "If this was an actual emergency" ...,
published Aug. 24 with a photo worth a thousand words.

Small towns are victims of a trend in our country to organize SWAT
teams. To sell towns the need for SWAT teams, police officials talk
about preparedness for terrorist incidents similar to Columbine. Once
trained, however, SWAT teams nationally are mostly used to serve drug
warrants and make drug arrests. One study shows 66 percent of their
use is for executing search and arrest warrants.

We should question using SWAT military-style power for the war on
drugs (also known as the war on some plants, war for profit and the
war against citizens). There are stories of SWAT using Gestapo tactics
and entering private homes to conduct drug war warrants, including too
many raids at wrong addresses, with too many innocent citizens killed
in as little as 11 seconds.

While the police are to serve and protect, SWAT seems primed to kill.
The SWAT teams are cited so many times throughout America for gross
misconduct, organizations have to resort to different names that
attempt to disassociate themselves from SWAT, since it induces
citizens' fear. The warm fuzzy (propagandic) names being phased in
include emergency response teams, tactical units or rapid response
teams, and Summit's "Incident Management Group."

A trend to cover the escalating cost for SWAT is subsidized through
grants available to police departments for escalating the war on
drugs. The state and federal governments give money from various
sources designated for the additional cost of fighting an unwinnable
war. When SWAT needs money to sustain itself, they reach to one of the
only sources available, government war money (the political gravy
train). It's effect makes a priority out of the drug war, since there
are no subsidies for work on investigations involving murder, rape,
armed robbery, etc. It is preposterous for police to cage drug users
and less financially lucrative to attack real crime. There is also a
direct correlation between what a state spends on education and how
many people that state incarcerates. The war uses the school money
while our school board seeks $27 million. One of the sickest examples
shows the state that spends the most on education is the state that
incarcerates the least humans, and vice versa.

Minnesota's ranking among U.S. incarceration rates: 51 (includes the
District of Columbia). Minnesota's ranking among U.S.
education-spending per capita: 1.

District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. incarceration rates: 1.
District of Columbia's ranking among U.S. education-spending per capita: 51.

America is In God We Trust, not prohibitionist politicians. Help end
the war, not escalate it. That will require Christ, not SWAT.

Stan White

Dillon, Colorado