Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America,Radley Balko

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Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (Book/ Paperback)

by Radley Balko

Product Overview

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

About the Author(s)

Radley Balko

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine, where he works as an investigative reporter covering criminal justice and civil liberties. Balko's work on paramilitary raids and the overuse of SWAT teams was featured in The New York Times, has been praised by outlets ranging from Human Events to the Daily Kos, and was cited by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent in the case Hudson v. Michigan. Balko is also credited with bringing national attention to the case of Cory Maye, a black man who prior to Balko's work was on death row in Mississippi for shooting and killing a white police officer during a raid on Maye's home. Balko's Reason feature on Maye was also cited in an opinion by the Mississippi State Supreme Court. National Journal also profiled Balko's coverage of the case. Balko's November 2007 investigative report on Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne won second place in the investigative reporting category for the 2007 Los Angeles Press Club awards. Balko was formerly a policy analyst with the Cato Institute. He has been a columnist for FoxNews.com and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Time, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Forbes, ESPN, the National Post, Worth and numerous other publications. Balko has also appeared on the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and NPR. Balko publishes the personal blog, TheAgitator.com. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism and political science.

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Product Details

Category: Civics

Format: Book (Paperback) (96)

Publisher: Cato Institute

Date Published: Jan 01, 2006

Language: English

SKU: LT-2347

Dimensions: 8.50 x 11.00 x 0.25 (in)

Weight: 9.40 oz



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