Around 6:30 p.m. on May 26, Brittany Shamily was at home with her children, including an infant, when police used a battering ram to bust in her front door. “What the hell is going on?” she screamed, terrified for herself and her family. “I got a three-month-old baby!”
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While the family was detained outside, the SWAT team “ransacked” their house, the lawsuit says. One SWAT team member punched a basketball-sized hole in the drywall. Another broke through a drop ceiling. They turned over drawers and left what had been an orderly house in disarray.
After this had gone on for more than half an hour, the AirPods were located — on the street outside the family’s home.
It later came to light that one of Shamily and Briscoe’s daughters saw what was likely the stolen Charger careening through their neighborhood a little before 7 a.m. that day. (The vehicle later crashed on the 1700 block of Foley Drive, about six miles from the family’s home.) It stands to reason that someone in the Charger tossed a pair of stolen AirPods onto the street in the vicinity of the quiet house police later busted into and ransacked.
The family, represented by Schock and Erich Vieth, is suing for damages stemming from embarrassment, unreasonable use of force, loss of liberty, and other factors. The lawsuit notes that neither Shamily or Briscoe had been in any trouble with the law for at least a dozen years prior to the incident. “There was no probable cause for the search warrant and had the affidavit contained complete information, the state court judge would not have approved the warrant,” the suit allege
The original premise made sense. It was a specialized response to extreme circumstances, where rando beat cops would’ve been outgunned, and letting them try would endanger more people. The obvious problem has been letting every asshole with a badge cosplay that scenario.
Except when they actually encounter that scenario, like in Uvalde.
We existed for a long ass time without them, we would be fine if we returned to that. Anytime we give cops more power they use it on the people they most frequently victimize.
Give the money that goes to cops to solve the underlying factors that create of crimes of poverty.
And no new problems ever happen. Right? No threats in the twentieth century were any different from the blunderbuss-and-bayonet era. Barney Fife was perfectly equipped to handle the Munich Olympics massacre.
Every town having a SWAT team is a phenomenon that is younger than I am, and I’m not all that old.
I’d posit that whatever SWATs supposed utility is vastly overwhelmed by their negative downsides. SWATing alone outweighs the benefits. That and cops propensity to want to use their shiny weapons whenever they can alone with the cop brain idea that all non cops are potential enemies seems like a shit system that we should be dismantling.
Yes, hence, “the obvious problem has been letting every asshole with a badge cosplay that scenario.”
The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer. Anything can be abused. We still have problems, and the sane solutions will tend to involve things that can be abused, because anything can be abused.