"Law Enforcement: SWAT Run Amok"
Two recent incidents involving SWAT teams are adding fuel to the fire in the emerging controversy over the routine use of such paramilitarized police units to prosecute the drug war. In Chicago, the Chicago Police Department has been hit with a $10 million lawsuit over a September raid on a social club. Meanwhile, in Florida, the Pembroke Pines Police Department Special Response Team, a SWAT-style unit, shot and killed a 46-year-old homeowner in a dawn raid June 13 that netted a whopping three-quarters of an ounce of marijuana.
SWAT team, Pasadena, Texas
In the Chicago raid, raw video of which is available here (part one) and here (part two), Chicago SWAT team officers dressed as if heading for combat in Baghdad hit the La Familia Motorcycle Club as it was being used for a birthday party. Officers exploded stun grenades, pointed assault weapons at people cowering in hallways, and, according to the attorney who filed the lawsuit, did so without producing a search warrant.
Attorney George Becker said police also stole $1,500 from amusement machines and $1,000 from a safe they broke open during the raid. Becker also said five women at the club were strip-searched by female officers in front of male officers and club patrons. Becker said those parts of the raid were not recorded because officers pointed surveillance cameras at the ceiling.
"It looked to me like the Chicago Police Department is engaging in military-type activity," said Becker after showing the raid video.
But police are unrepentant. "We believe the officers acted within department guidelines in executing the legal search warrant," Police Department spokeswoman Monique Bond said.
Although police said an informant had told them a shipment of drugs was destined for the building, they seized only a small quantity of drugs and one hand-gun. Two arrests were made -- one on a bond forfeiture warrant and one for reckless conduct.
Police in Pembroke Pines, Florida, are also unrepentant about their SWAT raid that left Victor Hodgkiss dead. Police have released few details about what exactly went down during the dawn raid, except to say they he was shot and killed after confronting them as they entered his home on a no-knock drug search warrant. The raid netted one arrest -- of the girlfriend of Hodgkiss's son, who was charged with possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana.
"We use SRT for all narcotics warrants," Pembroke Pines Deputy Police Chief David Golt told Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel columnist Mike Mayo, who wrote a scathing column denouncing the reflexive resort to SWAT-style tactics. "You never know what you're going to encounter."
As Mayo noted in his column: "In this case, a 46-year-old man with a concealed weapons permit and no record of violent crime encountered his demise in his home of 14 years."
Police did not say whether Hodgkiss was armed when he was shot, but they did say they recovered a weapon from the home.
The Hodgkiss killing bears eerie similarities with another Florida SWAT killing, the 2005 shooting death of Philip Diotaiuto, a 23-year-old bartender shot 10 times by officers after he grabbed a gun as they burst into his home in a dawn raid that netted little over an ounce of marijuana. No charges were ever filed against those officers, but a civil suit filed by Diotaiuto's family is pending.
In both cases, police were aware their target had a weapons permit and used that to justify their resort to SWAT team tactics. In both cases, people ended up being killed over trivial amounts of marijuana.
SWAT team policing excesses are nothing new, but seem to be on the upswing as the units, originally designed for hostage and other dangerous situations, are increasingly used routinely for drug search warrants and other law enforcement purposes. The Cato Institute's Radley Balko has compiled the primary source book for SWAT killings and other abuses, 2006's Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America."
Just down the road, readers!
SPRINGFIELD - With some panting and bleeding, members of the Street Crime Unit discovered they had hit pay dirt as drugs spilled out of the tattered backpack.
The geyser of illicit stuff - marijuana and crack cocaine - capped a frantic chase and an arrest by the recently resurrected Police Department unit on June 4.
It unfolded after the group's unmarked "spotter car" flagged a young male in the shadows of an alleyway. He appeared to be the source behind a hand-to-hand drug sale on lower Belmont Avenue in the city's Forest Park neighborhood moments earlier.
After a raucous, five-minute pursuit - through an innocent bystander's second-floor apartment, into some dense woods, and over a 20-foot chain-link fence - the suspect was cheekbone-down and handcuffed on a sidewalk at the bottom of Locust Street, surrounded by a flock of perturbed law officers.In Victor O. Calo's backpack, police discovered 39 bags of marijuana and 22 grams of crack cocaine. Moreover, the fleet-footed Calo had four outstanding arrest warrants linked to drug and gun charges brought in 2007, said police.
The next day, he faced charges of cocaine trafficking, breaking and entering, resisting arrest, and other crimes in District Court. Calo, 22, was ordered held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail, and remains in jail awaiting trial.
It was an exceptional evening for the Street Crime Unit that returned to patrol last month in SWAT-team style - not necessarily to make spectacular arrests, but to discourage gang activity in high-crime areas.
The members methodically lock up loiterers, brawlers, and alleged drug dealers alike, rolling through the city like a lint brush.
Since May, the 16-member street crime section has logged 94 arrests, recovered three illegal guns, and identified 150 suspected drug dealers and gang members, according to Sgt. John M. Delaney, the founder and one of two supervisors who lead the group.
The unit was originally established as a temporary "Safeguard Unit" in 2004 to quell a rash of shootings. Its focus shifted under former Police Commissioner Edward A. Flynn to preventing "quality-of-life" crimes such as car break-ins and muggings.
After Flynn took a job in Milwaukee, new Commissioner William J. Fitchet opted to restore the group's original anti-gang militia bent.
Members vary shifts and work only in unison, typically at night. They discuss the goings-on of the streets before each dispatch in a sparse office in a brick building off State Street.
"I want everyone out of their cars ... Don't be afraid to handcuff people, you know, if they were there yesterday," Delaney told members during a recent pre-shift briefing.
He was referring to the group's practice of using "no loitering" signs posted on buildings across the city as a means to forcibly remove malingerers.
After the meeting, the group moves through lower Longhill Street and other neighborhoods in Forest Park; spends a considerable amount of time at Federal and Worthington streets; purges a large group of teens from a block on Tyler Street; and then hits Main and Arch streets in the city's North End.
They keep an eye out for members of a new group that has emerged, "La Sociedad Secreta" (Spanish for "The Secret Society"), according to the tattoos many have inked on their necks, around which they wear identical heavy gold chains.
Please don't tell me they are ILLEGALS!!!
"They're claiming to be a rock band," Delaney said, although they appear to spend most of their time on street corners.
The unit's formula is simple and aggressive.
Dressed in black regalia, members move en masse through "hot spots" across the city. The battered, unmarked scout car travels in front, reporting suspicious activity.
On command, six marked police cruisers then swoop in from different angles. Members emerge from their cars, quiz their targets, pat them down, and snap their photographs for the unit's gang suspect database.
Arrests typically result from outstanding warrants, or when drugs or illegal weapons are found. Chronic loiterers are locked up for trespassing.
Some of the targets are bored teens hanging around to escape hot, stuffy apartments. Some, like Calo, pose an alleged threat to law and order.
During a sweep of an apartment block at Main and Arch streets, Delaney points at some profane graffiti sprayed on a wall in an apartment in the city's North End. "F*** SWAT Team," the black letters read.
Rather than being offended, he grins.
"That's like the newspaper of the streets," he said. "That's how I know word's getting around. We're having an impact."
To be sure, the unit's unsubtle tactics can raise the ire of city residents. Even some of their members, particularly those who grew up in the inner city, understand the plight of the poor but law-abiding citizens who live in high-crime neighborhoods.
"These apartments get hot on nights like this," said Patrolman Danilo "Danny" Feliciano, one of the new members, as his team rousted a pack of youths hanging out on a doorstep in the North End. "There's nowhere to go but outside ... At the same time, this is where the trouble starts, on these corners."
Of the city's most recent high-profile shootings, 19-year-old Mario L. Hornsby Jr. was shot dead as he gathered with a group of friends outside a house on Maynard Street in the Mason Square neighborhood. Two arrests have been made in that case, and police are searching for other suspects.
The captain of his high school basketball team and an honor student, Hornsby was said by police to be the unintended victim of an ongoing feud between two rival street gangs, the Sycamore Street and Eastern Avenue posses.
Indeed, many buildings in neighborhoods the Street Crime unit patrols bear the latter gang's signature: "Ave."
Graffiti and tattoos are two things to which members of the unit pay close attention. Along with gang colors, these traditionally signal gang affiliations.
"We use the term 'gangs' loosely," said Lt. John K. Slepchuk, the unit's second supervisor. "Some people think of gangs in terms of an organized group like the Mafia or something ... To me, these are kids who scribble s*** on walls, but they all have guns."
In an office at Police Headquarters on Pearl Street, there is a collage of snapshots pasted on a wall, some bearing the words: "known murderer," or "drug trafficker" or "suspect in Mario Hornsby shooting."
But, to catch a thief - or convict a murderer - is not as easy as that.
So, Street Crime members mine the streets for more knowledge.
Occasionally, members have to exercise some diplomacy in order to pacify prickly residents who question their tactics. After all, members want to encourage information from the streets.
Scroll back to the stoops of the North End where Patrolman Charles Youmans chatted up a female resident gathered with a large group near a porch while the unit was snapping photographs and shooing teens away.
"I told her that any one of those kids, or any one of them or those babies they're holding, could be the next victim of a shooting," he said later. "I told her we're trying to make sure that doesn't happen. She said, 'Well, you better come back every day, then'."
That was actually a very frightening article to read.
Fascism is already her, but we can't see it.
