REIN IN STATE'S 'NO-KNOCK' SWAT TEAM HOME RAIDS

You and your law-abiding neighbors in Mississippi might be just one
street address away from a life-threatening, midnight raid by a
local paramilitary police unit.

As these so-called SWAT squads increasingly become America's favored
search warrant delivery service, bungled raids - including many to
the wrong address - have skyrocketed. In these assaults on private
property, scores of innocent citizens, police officers and
nonviolent offenders have died.

In a recent CATO Institute report titled "Overkill: The Rise of
Paramilitary Police Raids in America," Radley Balko describes how,
"Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing
militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a
dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units
(most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for
routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to
serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry
into the home."

These raids - as many as 40,000 per year - terrorize nonviolent drug
offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians who are
awakened in the dead of night as teams of heavily armed paramilitary
units invade their homes.

In Mississippi earlier this year, reports Balko, acting on a tip
from an informant that someone was operating a meth lab, police in
Horn Lake launched a raid.

Once the paramilitary unit arrived at the scene, however, they found
two houses on the property, not one. They picked one and conducted
the raid. They woke up, terrorized and injured a couple in their
80s, leaving the man with bruised ribs and the woman with
a dislocated shoulder. Later, they found the meth lab in the other house.

SWAT Raids Can Go Tragically Wrong.

How did the once-trusted neighborhood cop become a serious threat to
life and privacy on the home front? Originally, Los Angeles
officials formed the nation's first SWAT units in response to civil
riots and hostage taking and bomb-toting radical groups in the
1960s. But by 1995, one study found, 89 percent of the
nation's police departments, including 65 percent of smaller towns
in the 25,000-50,000 population range, had a paramilitary unit.

SWAT squads found a new lease on life in the emerging tough-on-drugs
culture of the 1970s. By 1995, serving search warrants, mostly in
no-knock "drug raids," accounted for 75 percent of the actions of
the nation's SWAT squads.

These SWAT squads have become more and more of a threat to our civil
liberties.

First, they depend on notoriously unreliable informants when picking
raid targets.

Second, SWAT teams trained by U.S. Army Ranger and Navy Seal units
blur the line between war and law enforcement. Citizens are then
treated as if they are, in fact, combatants.

The use of military assault weapons and tactics actually turn
otherwise non-violent situations into violent confrontations when
startled occupants try to arm and defend themselves.

Finally, many law enforcement agencies receive money from the sale
of boats, cars and other assets seized during raids - a practice
that serves as a license for SWAT teams for more asset-seizing raids.

To rein in out-of-control SWAT units, Mississippi's state and local
governments should limit the use of these squads to their original
purposes, end corrupting asset forfeiture policies, and pass laws
that safeguard families' rights to the privacy and sanctity of their homes.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT
Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization.