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In the 10-minute helmetcam video above, you’ll witness an 11-officer, paramilitary SWAT raid on the home of 68-year old grandmother in Evansville, Indiana on June 11, 2012 (go to about 3:00 when the actual SWAT raid starts). This video and story provide a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the excessive militarization of America’s law enforcement. The video shows an extremely unnecessary amount of military-level force being used that appears to be way out of proportion to any possible threat posed to the warrior cops conducting the combat-style SWAT team by the residents in the home: a 68-year old grandmother Mrs. Louise Milan and her 18-year old adopted daughter Stephanie Milan. There was no evidence that there were any weapons, explosives or guns in the house, and no evidence that any threatening suspects were present. Here are some details:
1. The 11-officer SWAT team executed a “knock and announce rule” warrant (not a “no knock warrant”) which generally requires that a police officer “must first knock, identify himself or herself and his or her intent, and wait a reasonable amount of time for the occupants to let him or her into the residence.” In this case, the paramilitary SWAT team waiting only a few seconds and then used a battering ram to shatter a glass storm door. The warriors cops also broke other windows and detonated two flashbang grenades inside the house before entering. With assault rifles drawn, the paramilitary SWAT team ordered Mrs. Milan and Stephanie Milan on to the floor at gunpoint, and they were handcuffed and later led outside and taken into police custody.
2. Ira Milan, who has owned the house for 30 years and raised six children there with his wife Louise, was not home when the SWAT raid took place, but told the local media in Evansville that the front door was actually open and complained that the excessive use of force, including the use of stun grenades, was therefore unnecessary and unwarranted. No one has ever been arrested at the couple’s home during the three-decade period that they have resided there, and there was no evidence that any threatening suspects would be present at the home. In fact, the search warrant did not list the names of any specific suspects.
3. What was the 11-member SWAT team looking after aggressively and violently entering the Milan’s home in a combat-style raid with stun grenades and battering rams? Computer equipment, which local police thought was allegedly used to make anonymous online threats against police and their families on an online discussion forum at the website topix.com. The IP address used to make the threats was traced to the Milan home, but the family was wrongly targeted because it was actually a neighbor who made the threats after remotely accessing the Internet using the family’s wireless signal, which was not password-protected. The neighbor was later arrested by the FBI and pleaded guilty to charges of using forbidden speech.
4. According to court documents from a lawsuit filed on behalf of Mrs. Milan, the Evansville Police Department conducted the SWAT raid at the wrong address, since there was no evidence to suggest that either Mrs. Milan or Stephanie Milan were in any way involved in the online threats. Mrs. Milan is suing the Evansville Police Department for violating her rights protected by the 4th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, for their use of unreasonable and/or excessive force to carry out the search and seizure and falsely arresting and/or detaining her. Further, Mrs. Milan is suing the city of Evansville and its Police Department for “negligent training and supervision” for conducting the SWAT raid with a “callous and deliberate indifference to the rights of the Plaintiff and other individuals who are harmed by police conduct.”
In response to the lawsuit, Evansville city attorneys argued the force used to execute the SWAT raid with an 11-member paramilitary force that included the use of flash grenades was “objectively reasonable” and that the city’s law enforcement officials are “immune from liability.”
You can find additional information from news reports here, here and here.
MP: Just in case you thought that you could never be the victim of an unjustified SWAT raid in your own home, the case of Mrs. Milan provides yet another example of how even innocent Americans are being increasingly victimized by the escalating militarization of US law enforcement – “warrior coppery” as CD regular Morgan Frank calls it. In a more enlightened future, I predict future Americans will look back on this period in US history and wonder how we ever allowed law enforcement to become paramilitary organizations, where cops act more like soldiers in combat than keepers of the peace and in the process erode our liberties and freedoms.
To understand how far we’ve gone down the road towards a heavy-handed military police state, watch the video below of the first episode of Dragnet in 1967 where detectives Joe Friday and Bill Gannon make a drug bust at a house where a group of young adults are using LSD and marijuana. I realize that it’s just a TV show and may not accurately reflect the reality of police activities in that era, but it’s still instructional just the same because drug suspects are arrested with no tanks, no stun grenades, no assault rifles, no military equipment, no camouflage outfits; in fact they don’t even have any guns or handcuffs!
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