I’m in Dublin. I love Ireland (though England was great, too). I received an email from the Washington Monthly (you may remember them as one of the first magazines to publish a Flogging piece) asking my opinion about the UC Davis pepper-spray incident. I hadn’t heard of it. But ignorance is not bliss. So now…
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How about that? Maybe that guy in 1996 at the Abbey Lounge in Somerville wasn’t him after all. The Timesarticle leaves out the details regarding his relationship with his younger brother, who was a long time state representative and then President of of the University of Massachusetts. If my older brother was on the lam,…
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…The Department of Education comes with a SWAT team to bust down your door for an unpaid student loan(?). The Federal Department of Education?! Why do they havea SWAT team? For a student loan?! And, oh, yeah, turns out the woman they wanted wasn’t there. I’m thinking there must be more to this story… Man,…
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…But something always bothers me when police break down your door and kill you. Doesn’t seem necessary. update: The tactics here are terrible. Why are they standing in front of the door? I wouldn’t answer a call for a lost lolcat without standing off to the side. In fact, even today, 10 years later, I…
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A friend sent me this link which shows a bunch of unarmed cops confronting (and running away from) an armed suspect. Had this happened when I was a cop, I would have shot him. No doubt. And slept well. But these cops couldn’t shoot because they don’t have guns. And in the end everybody got…
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So in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County, Arizona, they send in a tank and the SWAT team to bust a guy — a guy with no history of owning weapons — for cockfighting. A scared neighbor said, “When the tank came in and pushed the wall over and you see what’s in there, and all…
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It’s like a new drug! “He wondered aloud why the state won’t let him pursue his preferred way of life.” That’s an Amish guy s talking about his illegal product… raw milk. When police, guns drawn, raid raw milk producers, it’s enough to make me a Libertarian. Here’s the story by Jordan Heller. Nolt’s resistance,…
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This isn’t new news, but it’s worth re-mentioning: No-knock raids are “a tactic that has grown in use from 2,000 to 3,000 raids a year in the mid-1980s, to 70,000 to 80,000 annually.” Maybe that doesn’t bother you at all. But it should. A no-knock raid is when police simply bust down your door at…
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The suspect is an armed and crazy and racist murderer. He’s killed before. He has multiple weapons. After a tip-off you get a warrant for his arrest. You know where he lives. A surveillance unit outside confirm his presence. Plan B is to send in the SWAT team and bust down the door in a…
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A SWAT team busted up a poker game of seniors. One cop and one gambler were shot. This is not what SWAT teams are for. Actually, unfortunately, it is what SWAT teams are for. So let me rephrase: this is not what SWAT teams shouldbe for. The shot 72-year old reportedly said, “Why didn’t you…
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