SWAT TEAMS ARE OUT OF CONTROL

You and your law-abiding neighbors in Virginia 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 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, 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, dressed not as police officers but as soldiers, invade their homes.

Balko reports that in 2000, based on a tip from a "reliable"
informant, Pulaski police conducted a 4 a.m. raid on the home of
William and Geneva Summers, breaking down the couple's back door,
waking them and holding them at gunpoint. No drugs were found. The
informant later admitted he had lied to the police. The judge who
issued the warrant said she thought it was unusual for an informant
to lie and that she had never heard of that happening before.

This year, police officers making a 6 a.m. raid on a Dale City home
broke down a door, handcuffed Arlita Hines and three teenagers and
lined them up, face down, on the floor for two hours while they
searched the home. The police then realized they had made a mistake
- -- the man they were looking for had not lived in the home for more
than a year.

Even when the police get the address right, SWAT raids often end
tragically. In January, a Fairfax County SWAT team served a warrant
on Salvatore Culosi Jr., an optometrist with no criminal record and
no history of violence. He was suspected of running a sports gambling
pool with friends. As officers surrounded Culosi outside of his home,
an officer's gun discharged, killing Culosi. An official
investigation did not charge the officer with wrongdoing. Officials
said later that nearly all of Fairfax County's search warrants --
even document searches -- are executed by a SWAT team.

How did the once trusted neighborhood cop become a serious threat to
life and privacy at home? 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. By 1995, one study found, 89
percent of police departments, including 65 percent of smaller towns'
in the 25,000-50,000 population range, had a paramilitary unit.

As the violence-prone '60s faded, SWAT squads found new 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 a threat to our civil liberties. They
depend on notoriously unreliable informants when picking raid
targets. And SWAT teams trained by U.S. Army Ranger and Navy Seal
units blur the line between war and law enforcement. Citizens are
treated as if they are combatants.

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

By 1990, 38 percent of all police departments, 51 percent of all
sheriff departments and 94 percent of all state police departments in
the U.S. received money from the sale of boats, cars and other assets
seized during drug raids. This money is then used to outfit more SWAT
teams for more asset-seizing raids -- a practice that serves as a
license for SWAT teams to confiscate private property for their own use.

To rein-in out-of-control SWAT units, Virginia'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.