Massachusetts SWAT team raids wrong home, keeps woman naked for 10 minutes

Here's the thing. Our nation is supposed to be the good guys. That's why we have a Constitution, that's why we fought a Revolutionary War, that's why we have Civil Rights, that's why we have a government with deliberately limited powers. Because this country was founded on the idea that innocent people shouldn't have to live in fear of their own government. That's the whole point of a democracy.

Nobody here is saying that our SWAT teams are as bad as KGB or Stasi or (sorry, Godwin), Nazi brownshirts. What they're saying is that the difference between us and "the bad guys" (USSR, East Germany, etc.), is now one only of degree, not in kind. Meaning we have a government that is now doing the same KINDS of things we condemn totalitarian police states for, just not as severely.

You're basically arguing "we only raped her, we didn't kill her like the Stasi did--so it's all hunky dory with nothing to worry about."

Did you read the part in the article where it said "innocent"? These people did nothing wrong. They broke no laws. But this happened to them. And worse stuff has happened to other equally innocent people (I remember the infant sent to intensive care due to SWAT throwing a flash grenade at it). If it happened to them, it can happen to you. Are you really okay with that? I'm not.

Stuff like this sets really bad precedent. Because it becomes a slippery slope. They're always pushing the envelope, testing. Just like a spoiled kid testing parents by deliberately misbehaving and seeing if the kid can get away with it. And if the kid does, the kid will keep pushing, doing worse, and worse and worse stuff until the parents finally get fed up and put a stop to it.

I recall another thread, foreigners comparing their experiences of US police with their experiences of police in their home countries. The thing that struck me the most is person after person after person relating how terrifying US police are, compared to what they're used to at home. They're not used to feeling fear just from seeing a cop car behind them while they're driving. They're not used to feeling panic and thinking "oh fuck! What did I do?" and not even knowing why they suddenly got a cop's attention. It's not like this in their home countries. They're not used to being afraid of police, who tend to value good community relations, are trained to act with professionalism, courtesy, extreme patience, to de-escalate instead of escalate, and are held accountable for bad behavior in ways US police are not.

In the UK I read of people feeling quite comfortable in walking up to a cop to ask for directions somewhere, used to a friendly and helpful response. Not in the US.

Seems to me we've already gone far, far down the path to tyranny. True, "we're not as bad as North Korea" or Cuba, or China or the USSR--but that doesn't comfort me. Too much like saying "Well this rapist isn't as bad as that murderer." "As bad as" is tacit acknowledgement that yeah, we are "bad".

What do you think the whole #BlackLivesMatter movement is about?

And man, I thought we'd FIXED this whole racism problem decades ago. This kind of stuff wasn't supposed to happen anymore. Thousands of people literally died to get equal rights and equal treatment for blacks--only to see our government revert back to the worst of the 1950s and 1930s all over again. What the fuck???

Maybe you're okay with how police and courts routinely behave now. I am not. One of the marks of tyranny is having to be afraid of your own government, your own police, even though you're just a normal law abiding citizen.

/r/news Thread Parent Link - masslive.com