Because every officer on a tactical unit is a steroid addled moron who couldn't get a better job than being a cop?
Umm, yes...absolutely. These people exist purely to ruin the lives of innocent people while doing nothing about legitimate and substantial crime. There is no job that currently exists that is less honorable than being a member of a SWAT team.
Because, so you know, a lot of us have college degrees. Some of us are on the job because we generally want to serve the communities in which we work.
A college degree does not make you exceptional. The supreme court decision that allows police departments to bar individuals with a high IQ is well known. You don't "serve' the community. You make it far more dangerous and scary for everyone around you.
We put in long hours for shit pay, all the while putting our necks out and risking not coming home to our families, for a world in which we're seen as scum.
No one forced you to do this job. If it sucks so much, quit. Or perhaps you aren't skilled enough in any other areas aside from abusing innocent people and escalating non-violent situations into tragedies? Also, it's well known that police unions nickel and dime every single moment of a cops career so that their take home pay is far, far higher than their publicly listed base pay. This is not top secret information.
Fuck. I have a damn degree in advanced pre-hospital critical care from Jefferson. I've spent countless hours training in field-level surgery (both in the Navy as an FMF Corpsman, and with my current agency). I've pulled bullets out of civilians, suspects, and other cops/agents. I've been shot myself. But, according to you, I'm jacked up on roids and too stupid to get a job as anything but. Cool.
If you're so great at surgery, then why not do that instead? Why not help people and heal them rather than ruin people and destroy them? I won't speculate as to the reasons why you became a cop but it's definitely a billion times less cooler than being a surgeon.
Regardless, getting back to the topic at hand. It is always tragic when a life is cut short like this. How about we wait to pass judgement until all the facts are in?
It doesn't matter how things went down. Even if the guy was armed (which current news articles state he wasn't armed) the police had no right to be there. They have no right to just barge into people's homes and perform summary executions over a drug. ESPECIALLY pot. No matter how this incident went down, what the police did was wrong. Unless this guy was a known agoraphobic who hasn't left his house in over a decade, there was simply no reason whatsoever that they couldn't surveil the house, wait for him to leave and arrest him 20 feet from his front door. They flat-out murdered a dude in his twenties over a fucking drug. As if any sociopathic asshole with a badge has any real and substantial authority whatsoever over what I do with my own body inside my own home.