Out of Control Cops

Radley Balko http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026197.php#026197 reports on the police killing of a man during service of an arrest warrant for gambling offenses. Why a SWAT unit was necessary to arrest a man for a non-violent crime is unclear, and why arms would even be un-holstered under the circumstances is a mystery.

When we were living in Bellingham, it happened that my neighbor right across the street was apprehended by police in a violent assault on his home just as I was going out to walk the dogs. I got to see the whole sorry affair. Over five cop cars and 10 cops from various agencies descended on the man’s house by storm, broke down the door with a battering ram, entered guns drawn and screaming, hurled the man to the floor, cuffed and shackled him, and hauled him away as his wife and infant child looked on. His crime? Poaching Dungeness crabs. He had a recreational license only but had been taking crabs and selling them to other people. The cops had had him under surveillance for weeks from an RV that had been parked from time to time just down the road.

I had bought quite a few crabs from the man, and I supposed that I was on tape making crab buys and would be taken in the middle of the night by the SWAT unit of the Bellingham PD. Luckily, buying crabs from an unlicensed vendor was not high on the cops’ priority list. The man had large day-glo signs advertising that he had crabs for sale. All you had to do was knock on his door and ask for some crabs. The cops could have done the same thing and taken him peaceably, and there was never any claim that the man was known to be dangerous or violent. The violent storming of the house was evidently done just for kicks. Good thing the baby wasn’t killed.

The police are an occupying force, not our friends.