Homeland Security?

"Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.

They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces."

 How many SWAT/Tactical Teams are actually needed?

And the obverse, how can they be justified?

We have seen that as more and more departments and agencies develop a SWAT or Tactical Team, the more they are used for things which are NOT in their original mission brief.

Mission Creep to the extreme.

SWAT teams are now being used to serve warrants for ordinance violators.  And being used for fishing expeditions, in order to simply justify their very budgetary existence.

Several agency's are now using them as revenue enhancements, to fund their departments through asset forfeiture of people who simply got caught up in a raid.

Innocent people have been killed because of raids on the wrong address or bad police work.

How do we make it stop?

How do we hold those accountable for these actions?

For a list of botched raids Please click the following link.  CATO.ORG Botched Paramilitary Police Raids