| >it appears necessary that SWAT teams are required to arrest people within their own homes given the fact that people are free to own weapons and use those for protection. No. The guy was an optometrist with a local business, your suggestion that he was some undercover cop-murderer waiting for the slightest provocation is absurd and insulting. He had every incentive to maintain civility in his neighborhood/town. There is very little reason to believe that he would have reacted violently to any of the following alternative tactics: - A phone call from an investigator requesting a meeting. - A knock on the door from a pair of polite/professional investigators. - Police could have waited for him to leave in a car and had patrolmen stop him on the street. >I'm just arguing that when people need to be arrested (lawfully or otherwise) How can you defend SWAT as a valid way to make an unlawful arrest? Have I misunderstood you? SWAT is only appropriate for hostage and other situations where danger is imminent. In other cases of people "needing arrest", the use of SWAT is abusive. |
Hindsight is 20/20. I will probably agree with you that if the police force did proper research on the suspect, then they would have chosen a different approach. However, I don't understand why they didn't so I can say very little about it. Perhaps it requires a structural change within the police force to accomplish this.
> How can you defend SWAT as a valid way to make an unlawful arrest? Have I misunderstood you?
You misunderstand me. Unlawful arrests are not good, but they happen anyway. The fact that the arrest is unlawful is not always known to the officers performing the arrest, so at that point in time and space, the legality of the arrest has become irrelevant.