Somebody Forgot To Pay A Fine? Well, Send Out The SWAT Team
We see too much of this lately -- maybe because there's so much media now, but maybe because there is too much of this.
A pediatric practice got raided last week, as police in Cottonwood, Arizona pulled together to arrest a dangerous...um...a person who still owed a bit of money to the state.
J.D. Tucille writes at Reason:
My wife, Dr. Wendy Tuccille, was on her way to the office in Cottonwood, Arizona, when her phone rang. Frantic staff called to tell her that the clinic's parking lot was full of cops, there to arrest one of her employees, C.H. (it's a small town so we'll stick with her initials), on an outstanding warrant.When my wife arrived she found a gaggle of cops--12 to 15 she told me, some in battle jammies--in plain view at the rear corner of the building. The parking lot was full of police vehicles, in sight of families and children arriving to be seen and treated.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked, demanding that they move the Fallujah reenactment out of view.
"We were already in the process of moving the vehicles at this time," Cottonwood Detective Sergeant Tod Moore insisted in a statement to me. "It should be noted only 1 marked police unit was in the main parking lot area of the business." (The clinic's staff dispute that point.) Moore also claimed that only 10 officers were present. They included three detectives dressed in civilian clothes--and tactical vests--who arrived to initiate the arrest, joined by seven additional officers, including SWAT members, who transported another suspect with them on the trip to deliver the arrest warrant that the detectives hadn't brought along.
C.H.'s crime? It was an eight-year-old "amended charge of 28-1381A1 DUI to the Slightest Degree," according to Court Clerk and Associate Magistrate Anna M. Kirton. Kirton signed C.H.'s release order after my wife paid $1,300 to spare her employee 26 days in jail. More accurately, C.H. was arrested for making only partial payment of the fines and fees she'd been assessed, and for missing a court appointment that she never knew about.
The alternative -- that works in many of these cases Tucille writes about -- is leaving a note for somebody to pay.
Oh, but that's not half as much fun as putting on that SWAT gear and taking somebody down. Also, that pays better:
The receipt for the payment that got C.H. sprung details a "base fine" charge of $163.05. On top of that the court added a "probation surcharge" of $6.52, other surcharges of $130.43, a $500.00 contribution to the "prison construction" fund, and another $500.00 for "public safety equipment" (I asked the cops if that's how they paid for SWAT's battle jammies, but didn't get an answer). The total came to $1,300--a pretty hefty sum, to be paid immediately on pain of "26 days in jail starting today. No work or early release," according to the court record.
Rather disgusting, huh?
The upshot:
"Imposing 'small fines' for our (often objectively harmless in and of itself) behavior as we move through the world or through traffic is one of the most significant ways Americans interact with the state. Even if the fines don't balloon to bigger fines and eventual arrest warrants, such interactions open up Americans to violations of dignity (like being publicly jacked up and handcuffed), privacy (you are supposed to identify yourself and give the cops a chance to look into your background), and possibly liberty," wrote Reason's Brian Doherty in a 2014 piece on the legal minefield that petty law enforcement creates for all of us--but especially the poor and powerless.
If we build it, they will come. It's far past time to recognize we have allowed a far greater threat to our lives than ISIS will ever be.
MarkD at March 31, 2016 5:46 AM
It's much safer to take down a scofflaw who hasn't paid their fines than to take a crack at an MS-13 safe house.
Those guys might actually kill some cops.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 31, 2016 6:32 AM
Related: North Carolina man arrested for not returning a VHS tape -- 14 years later
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/25/entertainment/arrest-for-14-year-late-video/index.html
Amy Alkon at March 31, 2016 6:41 AM
"It's much safer to take down a scofflaw who hasn't paid their fines than to take a crack at an MS-13 safe house."
Yep. We're seeing the same thing in prosecution: decisions on who to prosecute are being made on who is easiest to prosecute, rather than who, y'know, might have committed crimes.
I'm seeing statements from some cities that they routinely use the SWAT for all warrant service. "It's the safest way", they claim. Yeah, using a ram to knock down the door of someone who is delinquent on a parking ticket, who owns a gun and concludes that he's the subject of a home-invasion robber -- that's real safe. Totally necessary too, right?
There are hundreds of towns that have these SWAT units which serve no purpose whatsoever. It's like what Don Sutton once said about closers: "Closers are problem solvers. If there isn't a problem to solve, they'll create one."
Cousin Dave at March 31, 2016 6:46 AM
I don't know which is worse, being arrested for not returning a VHS tape 14 years ago or having the entire country know you rented Freddy Got Fingered.
Probably the VHS thing, but it's close.
Conan the Grammarian at March 31, 2016 9:04 AM
Hell, it's just equal treatment under the law. Plus $500 a pop for prison building. Who wouldn't want to live there?
Canvasback at March 31, 2016 9:18 AM
Related: Remember when Eric Holder made a big deal out of ending the federal government's "equitable sharing" program where they split the civil-asset forfeiture booty with state and local police departments, in exchange for cooperation? Well, that was all a sham. What really happened was that due to "funding difficulties", the Fed decided for a while that it was going to keep all the money for itself. My guess is that their "cooperation" fell off, and someone saw the light. Now the band is back together again!
Cousin Dave at March 31, 2016 10:31 AM
Correction Conan having the nation know you stole Freddy got Fingered.
I actually support the police in that case. He appears to have stolen the tape. They issued a warrant and ignored the issue since it is such a low priority. During a routine traffic stop they informed him of the warrant. They even let him go since he promised to turn himself in later (which he did).
Ben at March 31, 2016 11:18 AM
So they unnecessarily called out SWAT, and charged the target for that. But that's not the big problem; the big problem is that when SWAT is used for routine arrests, they are getting the opposite of proper training.
How do military forces train men for combat in peacetime? They train them full-time, hard, and as realistically as possible. This doesn't start at the rifle range - it starts with weeks of following stupid orders in barracks and parade grounds, so that you'll obey instantly when the officer tells you to do something *really* stupid, such as leaving your safe bunker to look for armed men that want to kill you. Next, the troops acquire specific skills, such as marksmanship. But all that just gets them ready for the real training - going through exercises simulating combat and the other situations they must face, as realistically as possible without being too unsafe, over and over again. Then after the exercise, they get together and review what happened, look for areas in which they can improve themselves, and look for ways to make the exercises more realistic. If a soldier is lucky, he'll keep doing that for the rest of his time in the service; if not so lucky, he'll get the chance to find out how well the training scenarios have prepared him for the real thing...
A SWAT team could and should train the same way - as a full-time job, interrupted only by the rare instances when SWAT is really needed. The trouble is, most police chiefs don't feel that they can afford to have a number of their best people on the payroll, but unavailable for day-to-day police work. Also, proper training is expensive in facilities, ammunition, and wear and tear on equipment. At best, you get part-time SWAT teams, that leave their regular jobs to train a few hours a week; they will be far more competent in a hostage rescue (for instance) than regular cops, although noticeably less competent than a team that does nothing but train correctly.
But nowadays too many departments seem to have found a worse way - keep the SWAT team together and misuse it for regular warrant service. One cost of that, unfortunately not born by the department, is unnecessarily violent police raids. The other cost is that the SWAT team gets sloppy and arrogant, as it deals again and again with alleged criminals that are either nonviolent or unprepared to put up an effective resistance. Then they get killed when they run into the kind of situation SWAT was created for...
For example, there's a dashboard video of the Jose Guerena raid, which targeted and killed an ex-marine based on faulty information and jumping to conclusions. My drill instructor would have said the cops looked "like a monkey fucking a football" - and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed defenders.
I could hear no announcement that they were police on the recording. The cops milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. Meanwhile, Guerena was getting his rifle and positioning himself to defend his family against the pack of armed thugs. If Guerena hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and had fired without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down - and he would have been justified, because the cops did not identify themselves.
markm at April 8, 2016 12:25 PM
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