A gun control proposal that everyone should support

[Raoul Duke]

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/ken_braun_a_gun_control_law_th.html

By one estimate, cited by the Cato Institute, American citizens have their homes and private property invaded 40,000 times per year by their government’s use of para-military police raids. There are obviously cases where SWAT teams are sent after clearly dangerous and violent criminals that need to spend many years in a cage.

When there’s 109 military assaults on Americans each day, mistakes happen. An elderly couple in Brooklyn recently suffered through 50 visits from police when a computer glitch in the NYPD’s database repeatedly dispatched cops to their home looking for various evildoers.

How often are mistakes made?

That’s a hard thing to find out: Police don’t often keep a public record and don’t want to. Because raids often happen in neighborhoods where poor, powerless citizens like Torres live, even the bad cases can stay out of the public eye. If the wrong door gets kicked in, but nobody is roughed up and they don't know who to complain to anyway, then who but the victim and the cops will ever know?

During the last session of the Michigan Legislature, conservative State Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, tried to change this with House Bill 4857. It would have required a twice-yearly report from every SWAT team in Michigan. They would need to list the location of each raid, the legal reason for it, the details of what happened, whether shots were fired, what was seized and who was arrested. A similar law in Maryland revealed that 4.5 homes per day were being raided.

McMillin introduced the bill following the death of a 7-year old Detroit girl who was killed during a Detroit police SWAT raid on her home. The only weapon fired was from the gun of one of the officers, who claimed (falsely) that the girl’s aunt reached for his weapon. Yet his only shot struck the little girl in the neck.

The bill received only two co-sponsors, both Detroit Democrats. It never got out of committee, allegedly due to strong resistance from law enforcement.

 

[Spata]

 

[peanut]

Tons of people will show up here condoning these actions and if you oppose illegal home invasions then someone will call you a cop hater.

 

[WTJ]

This should be interesting..

If the premise it the .gov is to be accountable to the .gov it will have almost zero effect. Why bother?

 

[Werewolf]

Tons of people will show up here condoning these actions and if you oppose illegal home invasions then someone will call you a cop hater.

One wonders. What with OSA being under new mangagement.

Maybe calling the police to task for questionable acts won't automatically be considered cop bashing anymore.

 

[OkieGentleman]

I am probably as pro police as anyone here, but there are lines that should not and must not be stepped over. If a police officer screws up while on duty and armed, an innocent could die through no fault of their own.

Police and teachers should draw high pay and be held to very high standards. Unfortunately the pay is not that good, but the standards still need to be high. Years ago a man was given a badge and gun and told to hit the streets, this made for some very bad policemen and that is still the stereo typical cop in a lot of peoples minds.

With the selection process, training and on site supervision that is done now, the old style cop is no longer true. 99.9999% of the police officers you deal with now are well trained, caring and professional. If one of these men makes a mistake he has to be held accountable for that mistake, the standards must be higher and the margin of error lower for a police officer.

To be a good police officer without burning out requires a lot from an individual and his family, many start out well but burn out to soon.

 

[Foghorn]

Okie,
I agree with what you said, I'm curious if you have any suggestions on how to reduce the margin of error?? I've never kicked the wrong door, and I don't know anyone who has but I've heard of it happening.
In my opinion the department should have to report the raids because most raids aren't done by swat teams. Most are done by smaller units or task forces so you'd miss the majority if only requiring swat teams to report. But the list really wouldn't tell you how the error occurred.. It really falls on the officer requesting the warrant to get the info right, once he screws up its all downhill from there..

 

[mugsy]

I'd support this but it is hardly a "gun control" measure, it is a police accountability measure.
I have never been a police officer but I am a retired military officer and, at least in Afghanistan, we had to keep detailed records of all planned missions and had to show detailed storyboards listing the intel trail and the actions on the objective. I don't think asking police departments to record and report raids on civilian homes is asking all that much and, frankly, I'd be suspicious of the police chief who resisted such a requirement.

 

[Raoul Duke]

I'd support this but it is hardly a "gun control" measure, it is a police accountability measure.

Yeah I got that impression too, that's why I originally posted this in general discussions. Although, it does remind me of the Grassley amendment(ALB13190) that was opposed by the DOJ and rejected on a party line vote by the Democrats that would have required the Attorney General to report to Congress annually about firearms violation prosecutions.

[video]http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4390392[/video]

 

[OkieGentleman]

FogHorn
The only answer that I could give for the accountability issue would be that the minimum rank of the person supervising on site sould be a Lt or higher. I am talking about SWAT actions, no knock searches and that type of action. An Lt or higher is going to make sure the dots are dotted and the Ts are crossed because he has to stand in front of a board and explain what went wrong. The patrolman on the street should not have to bear the burden of someone else foully up a warrant or other piece of paperwork that he was handed and told to serve, if its not correct then the man using incorrect paperwork is on the hot seat for it, because of someone elses sloppiness.

I once had to install a major alarm contract in OKC, that was for some reason sold out of one of our California offices. We did not know anything about it until the OKC office got the paperwork and the parts to in install. The sales guy only charged a minimum labor charge to install the alarm devices(the ceiling ranged up to 22 ft above the floor). He discounted the contract labor on the contract and cost the company $13,000, left off almost $10,000 worth of equipment and when the job went to heck, he and his manager called me to chew me out. After I very carefully itemizing his sins to his boss he was terminated, I was also told to just finish the job and make sure it was installed correctly. I have seen first hand what using someone elses paperwork can do to you.