In this post Commenter Wally tipped me to This Story
Super early breaking news, so I’m not going to speculate on what was going on.
What I DO want to discuss is the validity of these “Entry Team” raids. In this case we’re talking ATF, meaning there was Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, or Explosive laws violated.
Can anybody tell me what Evedence can be disposed of in short order that would necessitate this raid?
I mean let’s say they’re building full-auto AKs. It would take HOURS of hard work to destroy all the parts enough to destroy the ATF case. You could dump some distilled spirits down the drain….but more than a few gallons you’re going to be making a big fuss…also you’ll still have your distillation means to dispose of.
Same goes with the drug raids. We probably have all heard the story of kids being pulled over for a traffic violation and one kid eating a joint just-in-case. Gross story, and maybe a funny antic on how he got REALLY high as his body digested the drugs.
Still would that one joint be worth a no-knock midnight raid by a SWAT entry team? Seriously you’d need a large amount of weed, or other drugs to make such a raid worthwhile. How much of this stuff are you going to be able to flush or burn?
Same goes with commenter Thomas’story on a raid resulting in fatalities over a ragweed field mistaken for drugs. What disadvantage would the cops have in this case if they had simply knocked on the door, and politely asked to see the property, or politely served the warrant?
They could argue that while they knock on the door the bad guys could prepare to return fire, but it seems entry teams already take a LOT of fire, so I don’t see a HUGE tactical advantage….it would prevent police from getting the wrong address (“Sez here 69 Elm Street….this is 96, officer, you’re not even in the right neighborhood!”).
I just don’t see what these SWAT raids do besides get people killed who don’t need killin’
In this one Weerd I would have to say I currently see no problem with a no knock warrant when one is talking about major organized crime organizations with a proven track record of extremey violent crimes. Neither the Pagans or Outlaws are outlaw motorcycle clubs to be trifled with. A modicum of research will show them to be extremely violent gangs where shooting, knifing or in the case of the Outlaws bombs are a normal method of disposing of ones enemies or perceived enemies. Both gangs are known for violent shoot outs with police.
Additionally many of their homes are virtual fortresses- especially meth manufacture and distribution residences. I have a friend on a drug task force that has shown me some pictures of a Pagan meth house where sandbagged walls and poured concrete interior walls with gun ports were inside- not so much for cops as other criminals.
In these cases a no knock in the early morning has the potential of being safer for everyone. Hit the criminal element while asleep and disoriented gives you an advantage. If the person killed was a hardcore member of either MC I wont shed any tears. Instead its probably one less individual whose rap sheet reads like a demons resume off the streets. In this case it is quite possile this was a person needing killing.
I normally agree with your comments 99% of the time. This time I think if you go back, re-read the article, and do some research on the Pagans and Outlaws you may have a different view point to these particular no knocks.
That’s a very good point. I guess to defend my comments I’ll ask how often are the SWAT raiding such establishments?
Long time ago in a galaxy far away I used to work part time for a bike shop in Colorado that dealt with some of those sort of fellows. I wouldn’t want to be the cop raiding them. And I don’t see how a no-knock makes them any safer as most of them slept with hearing protection and face masks so flash bangs just alert them that you are there and then the gun ports come into play.
So-A: Cops Dynamic Entry the CORRECT house and they might get slaughtered.
So-B: Cops Dynamic Entry the WRONG house and they might kill civilians of get slaughtered.
Where’s the win?
Then we’re back to the farcical drug war that feeds these people’s careers.
Sons of Silence were interesting individuals too. One of them thought a Harley wrench in Pueblo tuned his S&S Super E wrong so 5 of them came back and broke every single bone in each of his hands between a ball-pein hammer and one of his shop anvils.
I think the ones that you didn’t get in your no-knock raid might come back and tie up your wives and daughters and rape them in front of you before murdering you and letting the women live or vice-versa, depending on their mood.
So where are we again in often needless escalation of force being useful?
Raid Dep. Keith got killed on was well planned but even the best vests have ARM HOLES, through which even little .380 bullets can make it even after passing through a mobile home door…
The world is down a gram of meth, 2 families are without dad’s, as if the feller with the meth had known it was police he wouldn’t have shot, he said so more than once. Brilliant planning.
And as above on the really dangerous criminals. Even if you have EVERY BADGE IN THE FOOKIN WORLD they will hunt you down and kill you after the fact as often as not. Note the RPG that got launched at a Cali police station recently and what’s been happening in Mexico and drifting into the US as the Mexicans are getting into the speed trade too?
Drug war creates violent desperate people with no other careers but LOTS OF MONEY AND TIME TO ARM THEMSELVES. People who will have people kill you even if you manage to arrest them.
There was a fellow here in Texas a few years back who tried to start a HA chapter. HA and Bandidos have an agreement that Texas is Bandidos and no Bandidos in California. He was walking out of a pizza joint in broad daylight with his family about to get into his vehicle when his head exploded all over his wife and kids. Still unsolved.
Same things happen to cops sometimes who go after them. Couple Texas Judges have been knocked off over the years, even. I think unless you’re going to authorize tac-air, cruise missiles, and risk all the mistakes that could happen there, you still haven’t made an excuse that’s valid to me for no-knocks.
And as you said in yourself, most of the armor and armaments that those folks have is DIRECTED AT EACH OTHER, NOT COPS. Friend’s FIL (R.I.P.) was Oakland and SF PD. They let the biker gangs kill each other and didn’t investigate them much. Was just trash killing trash. If they’re gonna kill each other, why stick your face in the crossfire?
Except extreme circumstances, I don’t think dynamic entry raids are much of a good idea, and even when they are appropriate uses of force, they have a horrible track record unless you score it like the Spetsnaz: “Yeah, we killed most of the hostages and the school blew up but WE KILLED ALL OF THE TERRORISTS!”
Bullshit.
There are only three justifications for a no-knock dynamic entry:
1. Safety of innocents (i.e., hostages)
2. Officer safety (your example biker gangs)
3. Preservation of evidence (“They’ll flush it!”)
If the situation looks like a dynamic entry is the only way to SAVE innocent civilians; no contest. Do the breach. Keep in mind that dynamic entries WILL kill a certain number of hostages by mistake or enemy action — So dynamic entry is NEVER Plan A in a hostage situation, which is why they invented this job title called “negotiators”. You only breach if it seems to be the best chance of survivial for most hostages. You can talk about, “The only acceptable collateral damage is 0%!” and beat your chest all you like, but you WILL end up with dead hostages if you do enough dynamic breaches. . . because they are DYNAMIC — if tehy are done correctly, shit happens faster than people can react to rationally.
So, hostages are a valid reason for a no-knock dynamic breach, but ONLY as a last resort. Note that this justification has NOTHING to do with the chances of the criminals resisting violently or destroying evidence — you’re focussed on “Will this tactic save THESE hostages TODAY?” to the exclusion of other concerns.
Officer safety implies that the speed of action will get the team IN and IN CONTROL of the situation before the Bad Guys can react effectively. The surprise dynamic buys them about 10 seconds. . . Let’s look at that for a moment. . .
There’s a REASON that states and localities have passed laws about “fortifying a drug house” or similar language. That’s becuase the real bad assed “We’ll shoot a pig in a heartbeat!” kind of guys you can count on resisting violently tend to do so. It ain’t hard to reinforce a door so it is still readily useable, but will slow the entry team down by at least ten seconds. Same-O, Same-O for windows (windows don’t need to hold out as long, because it takes longer to get the team in as a COHERENT force through them, even if you simultaneously use several).
Guys who do NOT habitually fort up are generally either far less likely to resist violently (IF THEY KNOW IT’S THE COPS), or they are a bunch of disorganized gangbangers who are easy meat for a dynamic entry team.
So, how do you handle officer safety WITHOUT doing a no-knock dynamic entry, where we’ve established there are no hostages? All you now need to do is answer one question, “Is this structure attached to other inhabited or explosive structures?”
If the answer is “No”, surround the place entirely, THEN make a big ruckus outside with lights and sirens and a guy with a PA system saying, “This is the police. We have a warrant. Come out with your hands up, surrender peacefully, and no one will get hurt. Resist and we will kill you.” If they resist, feel free to make the breach with an armored breaching vehicle (hey, LAPD got their in teh 1970’s or early 1980’s. . . or you could borrow one from the National Guard), drop a friggin’ bomb on them, or just light the place on fire. The Bad Guys decided to ante up to the game of Organized Group Violence — they can play the Big Boy cards they got dealt. Losing sucks, and I have zero sympathy for them — killing sociopaths that stupid improves the species.
If they refuse, but do not offer violent resistance, you can either wait/starve them out (like the Montana Freemen) or go to the “resistance” plan above. Again, if they want to play Masada, cool.
If the target is attached to something you CANNOT risk damage to (NOT “are not WILLING” to risk damage to”), then you may have to breach, if you cannot contain and wait them out. You should probably breach through a “non-traditional entry point”, such as blowing a hole in a wall (preferrably, one to the attached structure — it’s least likely to be covered.) But you still contain the area and make a big, noisy, visible show outside and ask them to surrender. The ONLY difference is that you cannot just torch the place or blow it up, due to that attached structure.
Keep in mind that the guys inside during a no-knock warning probably WILL NOT be able to change gears fast enough to realize you ARE cops, and not criminals bent on murdering THEM. Unfortunately, given the circumstances of a dynamic entry, once someone (ANYONE, LEO or civilian) pulls a trigger the party starts, the cops MUST keep shooting until they are the only ones left standing. It’s a knife fight in a phone booth. . . too close, too fast, and too lethal for half-measures once the gunfight begins. And the party can get kicked off as the family pet attcks one of the “foreign invaders” and the cop is forced to shoot the dog to avoid getting eaten.
Unfortunately, the same is true for any civilian (criminal, or armed innocent party on the wrong end of a clerical mistake). Once the shooting starts, they are VERY unlikely to realize these ARE cops. Tunnel vision, sensory distortions, and temporal distoration and dislocation aren;t just phenomenon that affect cops in dynamic situations, they affect civilian, too — and there’s at least a chance teh cop was trained to deal with it or expect it. People (including cops) report how they have failed to notice really important stuff in fights, like gun fire and muzzle flash from their own weapon. . . missing some guy in a black ninja suit shouting “POLICE” through his gas mask filters AFTER he’s smashed the door may not be heard at all.
Again, if officer safety is the primary concern, letting them know you’re there and asking them to surrender won’t get any cops killed, whereas a no-warning breach (especially through an exterior door, as is so often done) could easily get cops killed by Bad Guys who aren’t stupid enough to shoot a cop, but WILL shoot an unannounced armed intruder, on the theory he’s a rival assassination or robbery team.
Dynamic entry INCREASES the odds of a situation going lethal, unless you can take complete control within those precious few seconds. . . which presumes you can get in quickly, the inhabitants are NOT armed, and no one mistakes Jimmy sticking his head out of the kitchen to see the commotion with the knife he was using to spread PB&J with in his hand for a guy attacking with a knife.
So, officer safety is taken care of. Even compared in a well executed no-knock dynamic entry, these options offer less risk to the officer. In fact, “officer safety” is a strawman, just as it is in MOST cases where it is claimed.
How’s about a little fire, Strawman?
But, wait, there’s the “preservation of evidence” argument. Ok, let’s look at that one.
As others have said, how much contraband are we talking about? Enough to destroy in the 1-2 minutes between announcement and dynamic breach? (I’m NOT opposed to breaching per se, just no-knock breaches other than to save hostages.) If so, does it REALLY merit a full dynamic entry? Have the police officers never considered asking for assistance from teh utilities? (I had a friend in the water department of my hometown. Regularly, he had to assist in serving contraband warrants by shutting off water to the house, placing capture nets on the water outflow, and/or collectingsamples from the septic tank for testing for large quantities of unmetabolized drugs.)
Leaving that aside, and pretending that a no-knock dynamic entry is the ONLY way to preserve evidence, when did the legal tradition of, “It is better to let 100 guilty men go free than wrongly imprison 1 innocent man,” morph into “Better we kill an unknown – but greater than zero – number of both bad guys who otherwise would have surrendered, AND INNOCENT PEOPLE WHEN WE SCREWED UP, than to let a single contraband crime go unpunished”?
We are willing to unilaterally escalate to a lethal threat situation when we cannot know if the warrant is 100% correct, and no mistakes were made in serving it, no clerical mistakes were made in typing it up, the informant didn’t lie, the informant isn’t HONESTLY MISTAKEN, the investigating officers didn’t screw up, etc.?
I was calling BS on Blackhawk, not Thomas.
I realize and concur.
From the latest on the Maine Raid:
“The federal crackdown on the Outlaws stems largely from their turf war with the Hells Angels. That conflict erupted in Portland in 2002 and 2005, when groups affiliated with the national motorcycle gangs descended in large numbers on the Old Port and clashed occasionally with each other and police.”
So they were doing a forced entry on a POS involved in fights with other POS people and as far as I know, in the Outlaw vs HA scrap it was ONLY OUTLAWS AND HA that were at risk. They weren’t looking to kill cops. they Don’t care about cops. It was a gang war and no innocents were being hurt.
FWIW, Entebbe was brilliant but LUCKY. Seychelles was planned just as well and landed a relation of my dad’s college chum in jail for a bit because the luck didn’t work as well that time…
Beslan and Waco are more par for the course than Libyan Embassy SAS maneuvers when it comes to dynamic entries, and those were with well trained people that had practiced on MODELS OF WHAT THEY WERE ASSAULTING and HAD PEOPLE ON THE INSIDE.
Oh, so the Outlaws problem is primarily “misdemeanor homicide” (AKA “NHI homicide” — No Human Involved), with some gun running (tax offence), meth trafficing (contraband offence), and prostitution (vice crime) on the side?
Yup. that’s worth risking the lives of a trained entry team over. Yup, yup. Why, that’s almost as serious as an iunpiad parking ticket in Boston!
Obvious to anybody who read your comment. VERY well thought-out and written as well.
Thanks for that
The figure I heard many moons ago from a guy who used to work in this line of trade out of Bragg was that 10% casualties were considered acceptable.
That’s 10% of the hostages dead in a dynamic breach situation, not 10% of the team. (For various reasons, including armor, the team members have a better chance of coming out without losses than the hostages.)
The numbers get worse for especially bad situations. Like full airliners.
I don’t remember the case name, but there’s one raid I remember that happened in the wrong town. Wrong house is a screwup, wrong street is a fuckup… wrong TOWN is a goat-rope.
And if the Brady Bunch were really really about reducing gun violence, they could do a lot by getting no-knocks removed from the system. They could do so much more by working to reduce SWAT usage for low-threat warrants.
Rumor has it that the warantees opened fire on atf as they were approaching the house. No real solid inside story, just one buddy in the area who went ‘conrition super red except for that one brown streak’ this morning. But I expect to run into some OOB PD this weekend.
There was already at least one outlaw shooting this year, somewhere upstate a bit. Shot one of their own, for whatever little that is worth.
Local news is now reporting that the warantees opened fire when ATF was in the house.
Not taking sides here, just interesting to watch the story change when only one side can get their message out.
On a tangentially related note, I’ve got a big problem with the “No fortifying your castle” laws. Not all of us live in low crime neighborhoods where home invasions are rare to nonexistent. I’m not adding 3″ screws to my doorframe and considering laying down the gelt for anti-shatter window film on account of the po-po. I’m considering doing all that because I live a block off of a major cross street, and home invasions have been on the upswing in my metro area.
I’m in the county, so electric fences and razor wire are allowed. Are you allowed those options?
Texas law says they have to be well marked so as not to damage EMS/VFD/LEO personnel that didn’t know they were there, but it’s quite lawful. No booby traps, any kind of fence you want, as long as you mark it properly and it isn’t a reactively explosive fence 🙂
My signs that say “PRAYER IS BEST TO MEET THE LORD BUT TRESPASSING IS FASTER” keep everybody but UPS and Fed-Ex off my porch and they call from the gate.
Go talk to the local gendarmes and see what you can get away with, then say screw it like Boomer Lad did, and go buy acres in the country and BRENs 🙂 The most important thing isn’t fortifying, as far as Texas and Montana/Colorado law were in my reading, it was risk of harm to people not aware of traps or mines. Sturdy walls and windows are perfectly legal. “Bird Observation Platforms” with pintle mounts are perfectly legal. Anything that might kill a civil servant on a legitimate mission to visit your home is illegal, hence NO MINES OR BOOBY-TRAPS and MAKE EVERYTHING ELSE AS STURDY AS YOU LIKE.
When I lived closer to a city, my neighbor bought his son a welder and the first thing he did was weld up that place like Fort Knox. Might have sucked in case of a fire, but not illegal. Check your local building codes and with LEO people. Say “We’re on the same side but where is the line? I want to protect myself.”
Stay Safe.
Semper Vigil!
I got USKS as a capture code again…is this a plot? I don’t like them.
… hence NO MINES OR BOOBY-TRAPS …
Aww, man… and here I was hoping I could bust out the claymores and bouncing betties… (chuckle)
I am not agreeing with the law, and some are damn stupid that simply kicking a door wedge under your door before you go to bed is a felony. Still some laws specifically only target “houses of ill repute” such as drug or prostitution houses. The idea is one is fortifying against criminal invasion, the other is fortifying against Police raids.
Still as Geodkyt points out, there is really no good way to do an entry, so either way it appears to be a feel-good law written by those who don’t really know what they’re talking about.
For once there’s talk of a different kind of “dynamic entry” at OOB…