Practice makes perfect - swat team tactics used to check water quality

[40hz]

You just can't make these stories up folks!

From Techdirt (who else?)

Regulatory Agencies Sending Armed Squads To Check Water Quality, 'Rescue' Baby Deer
from the when-all-you-have-is-a-bunch-of-armed-officers... dept

It seems as if nearly every police department, no matter how small or unthreatened by criminal activity, wants to outfit their officers with military-grade equipment (something the DHS is only to happy to help with -- provided someone invokes the codeword "terrorism" at some point during the requisition). The outcome is inevitable, tragic and more than a little ridiculous. Local SWAT teams are now rolling up on suburban lawns like they're storming Normandy, executing no-knock warrants in the dead of night to unverified addresses. Some occasions result in little more than completely freaked-out citizens. Others end in death and injury. Sometimes it's just the family dog that takes a bullet. Other times, it's innocent civilians.

But this militarization goes even further than various police departments. It also permeates other government agencies, agencies that really shouldn't be utilizing heavily-armed SWAT teams to enforce regulatory policies. It's not as if anyone should be expecting the kind of resistance these teams are armed for -- at least not in these situations.

This is the bold new face of American enforcement -- squads of armed men sent on a life-or-death mission to… check water quality...

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Give a baby a hammer - and it soon discovers everything is a nail.

Give a young cop a ninja suit and an assault rifle and everything soon turns into an outtake from a Die Hard movie.

Seriously...

Just what are they really practicing all these storm trooper tactics for?