Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 00:22:58 +1100
From: rc&am <rcollins-AT-netlink.com.au>
Subject: AUT: war on crime


_________________________________________________________________

                           WAR ON CRIME
_________________________________________________________________

     The SFPD used SWAT-style equipment to raid a Western
     Addition housing project. Does military gear encourage
     military policing?

     SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
     November 18, 1998
     http://www.sfbg.com/News/33/07/Features/cops.html
     By Christian Parenti

                              * * *

     JUST BEFORE DAWN on Oct. 30, 90 law-enforcement officers
wearing black masks and fatigues and armed with assault rifles
stormed the Martin Luther King Jr./Marcus Garvey Cooperative in
the Western Addition. They used special "shock-lock" shotgun
rounds to blow apartment doors off their hinges and cleared
people out of rooms by throwing "flash-bang grenades," which
produce nonlethal explosions that terrify and disorient people.

     At a Nov. 4 police commission meeting, a train of furious
and sobbing residents from the raided housing complex -- all of
them African American -- described how officers slapped them,
stepped on their necks, and put guns to their heads while other
officers ransacked their homes. Weeping and terrified children,
some as young as six, were handcuffed and separated from their
parents. Some urinated in their pajamas. (Police chief Fred Lau
told the San Francisco Chronicle that officers wanted to keep the
kids from "running around.")

     Residents of the complex say the raid was a violation of
their civil rights. Scores of people with no charges against them
and no criminal records were put in disposable plastic "flex-
cuffs." Civil servants and grandmothers were held at gunpoint.
One woman was hospitalized after a fit of seizures; other people
were so distraught they couldn't return to work for days.

     And a pit bull named Bosco -- which many residents described
as well liked and friendly -- was shot inside an apartment,
dragged bleeding outside, and shot again. Deputy chief Richard
Holder told police commissioners that, according to police
intelligence gathered during "covert operations," the dog was
"known for its jumping ability and was shot in mid-air."

     The squad that raided the housing complex included agents
from the San Francisco Police Department's tactical squad and
narcotics division, the District Attorney's office, the FBI, the
Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms. According to SFPD narcotics lieutenant Kitt Crenshaw,
who initiated and planned the operation, the action was designed
to "to put fear in the hearts" of a gang called the Knock Out
Posse. "The raid went off, more or less, without a hitch,"
Crenshaw said. "I feel bad for the innocent women and children
that were there, but in a way they do bear some responsibility
for harboring drug dealers."

     Agents made 11 arrests and netted a pound of what Crenshaw
described as "high-grade" marijuana, almost four ounces of crack
cocaine, seven pistols, and $4,000 cash. Residents say that money
was not drug lucre, that it had been collected to help pay for
the funeral of Germain Brown, a recently deceased friend. Thanks
to state and federal asset forfeiture laws, the SFPD may get to
keep and spend 80 percent of the seized money.

SWAT NATION

     Though the raid on the King/Garvey project was brutal and
audacious, it was not unusual. Paramilitary or tactical policing
-- law enforcement that uses the equipment, training, rhetoric,
and tactics of warfare -- is on the rise nationwide. According to
a study by sociologist Peter Kraska, there are more than 30,000
heavily armed, militarily trained police units in the United
States -- and the number of paramilitary police "call-outs"
quadrupled between 1980 and 1995.

     The tactical buildup has been fueled by fattened drug-war
budgets and a wave of federal largesse. Between 1995 and 1997 the
Department of Defense gave local police 1.2 million pieces of
military hardware, including more than 3,800 M16 automatic
assault rifles, 2,185 Rugar M14 semiautomatic rifles, 73 M79
grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers (APCs). One
tactical outfit calls its APC "mother"; another, in east Texas,
has named its APCs "Bubba One" and "Bubba Two."

     Military gear given to the SFPD includes two helicopters,
several electrical generators, vehicles, and office furniture,
according to tactical officer Dino Zografos. Several years ago
the department acquired two APCs from the United Kingdom. The
department's 45-officer tac squad buys its own AR 15 and MP53
assault rifles. Most of the SFPD's tactical training is done
in-house, though SWAT officers have received special instruction
from FBI, military, and private instructors.

     Nationwide, tactical units have metastasized from emergency
response teams into a standard part of everyday policing. SWAT
teams that would once have been called in only to handle the
occasional barricaded suspect now conduct routine drug raids like
the one on the King/Garvey co-op. In Fresno, Indianapolis, and
San Francisco they even patrol high-crime areas.

     Critics of SWAT-style policing say militarized training,
weaponry, and organization cause cops to overreact and treat
ordinary policing situations as military operations. "The
fundamental problem with the SWAT model is that if police become
soldiers, the community becomes the enemy," says Sacramento State
University sociologist Tony Platt, one of the first scholars to
analyze the rise of tactical policing. "Paramilitary policing
erodes the idea of police as pubic servants subordinate to
community needs."

     And Kraska says, "The more paramilitary police units exist,
the more all policing will be militarized." Considering what's
happening around the country, those charges don't seem far-
fetched. According to a CBS News survey of SWAT encounters,
police use of deadly force has increased 34 percent in the past
three years.

TACTICAL FUTURE

     For a look at the future of American law enforcement, travel
south on Highway 99 from San Francisco to Fresno, and turn off on
one of the city's southern exits. On the pocked side streets of
southwest Fresno's sprawling ghetto, among fading stucco
bungalows and dying rail yards, massive paramilitary police
operations take place almost every night.

     It's a cold October night; 30 police officers (three squads
of 10) don black jumpsuits, military helmets, and bulletproof
vests, lock and load their Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns,
and fan out for a routine patrol. Meet Fresno's Violent Crime
Suppression Unit (VCSU), the Fresno P.D.'s "special forces" and
America's most aggressive SWAT team.

     Since 1994 the VCSU has patrolled the city's have-not
suburbs in full military gear, with automatic assault rifles (the
same model used by Navy SEALs) at the ready. The unit is backed
by two helicopters with infra-red scopes and an army-surplus APC;
it's equipped with attack dogs, flash-bang grenades, smoke bombs,
tear gas, pepper spray, metal clubs, and "blunt trauma
ordnances," essentially beanbags fired from shotguns, designed to
daze rather than kill.

     "It's a war," Sgt. Margaret Mims of the Fresno Sheriff's
Department says. In the name of crisis management, the VCSU is
free to use aggressive and unorthodox tactics. Sometimes the unit
quietly deploys troops on foot to surround targeted corners or
sweep through neighborhoods. At other times, like this autumn
night, agents move in a fleet of regular patrol cars "like a wolf
pack" looking for "contact," as a VCSU officer put it. "Contacts"
generally involve swooping onto street corners, forcing
pedestrians to the ground, searching them, running warrant
checks, taking photos, and entering all the new "intelligence"
into a state database from computer terminals in each patrol car.

     The area of operation is a poor and desolate African
American neighborhood Fresno residents call the Dog Pound.

     As the patrol makes a routine traffic stop, a man is
standing on the sidewalk talking to the driver. When the VCSU
pull up, he flees into a nearby house. The VCSU immediately
surround the area. Officers with AR 15s and H&K MP5s "hold the
perimeter," some watching the house, others looking out at the
neighborhood. Five officers rush the door.

     The VCSU are not, technically, in "hot pursuit." They have
no legal right to enter the premises. But the elderly woman
behind the black metal door is confronted with five SWAT-style
officers with submachine guns, and they want to search her house.
She consents.

     Five big, white cops move into the living room and grab a
young African American man. They demand to know his name; it's
David. "What?" he says. "Man, I didn't do anything!" As he
protests, his voice cracks and a tearful grimace clouds his face.

     With consent from David's trembling grandmother, three cops
search the little bungalow. For all the agents' science
fiction-esque uniforms and state-of-the-art gear, they call up an
awful specter from the past. More than anything else, the
robocops of the VCSU resemble the "patrollers" of the Old South,
the slave-catching militias that spent their nights rousting
plantation shacks looking for contraband, weapons, and signs that
slaves were planning to escape north.

     "Are you on parole, probation? Huh?" a VCSU officer demands.
"Let's go outside, David." The suspect is cuffed, searched,
interrogated, and forced to the ground. His name is fed into a
computer. A flashlight is continuously pointed at his face. No
drugs are found. But David lied, saying he wasn't on parole, and
he is. "That's a violation of parole, David." The white cops send
another black man off to jail.

     For much of the rest of the night, a standoff occupies 30
cops from three different agencies and two helicopters. The
target is a teenager who hasn't been charged with anything; he's
just wanted for questioning. "If you're 21, male, living in one
of these neighborhoods, and you're not in our computer, then
there's definitely something wrong," VCSU officer Paul Boyer
says.

WIDESPREAD ABUSES

     Fresno's is the only police department in the country that
deploys its tactical units for routine patrol work. But big,
aggressive SWAT operations like the one at the King/Garvey co-op
are becoming more common. From Albuquerque to Miami, tactical
teams have repeatedly shot and killed unarmed civilians in the
course of botched drug raids. In a recent case in Bethlehem, Pa.,
a SWAT team killed a suspect, then burnt his house down. And
thanks to confusion and the overzealous use of flash-bang
grenades, tactical officers are increasingly shooting one
another; a case in Oxnard, Calif., is the most recent example.

     Perhaps the most infamous police tactical operation took
place several years ago in Chapel Hill, N.C. In "Operation
Ready-Rock," police received a blanket warrant allowing them to
search every person and vehicle on the 100 block of Graham
Street.

     "We believe that there are no 'innocent' people at this
place," the police department's warrant request stated. "Only
drug sellers and drug buyers are on the described premises."
Forty-five heavily armed commandos from local and state
law-enforcement agencies sealed off the street and made what
police would describe as a "dynamic entrance" into a pool hall by
smashing in the front door and holding occupants at gunpoint.
Whites were allowed to leave the area; more than 100 African
Americans were searched. Agents found only minor quantities of
drugs.

     It's not every municipal agency that can afford equipment
that's too powerful for the task at hand. Elsewhere in North
Carolina, the Greensboro public library's bus-sized "bookmobile"
was recently retired for lack of funds. Shortly thereafter, the
police department bought the bookmobile and converted it into a
mobile command-and-control center for its elite 23-member Special
Response Team.

     The cops were delighted: a six-foot-five SRT officer had
trouble standing up in the previous van. "It's a great piece of
equipment," police spokesperson M.C. Bitner said. "It's really so
much better than what we had."

     Parts of this article were adapted from the author's
     forthcoming book Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the
     Age of Crisis (Verso).

     Copyright 1998 San Francisco Bay Guardian



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