John Whitehead's Commentary
If It Could Happen to Elian, It Could Happen to You
The dawn raid of Elian Gonzalez's Miami home has inspired outrage from both ends of the political spectrum and nearly everywhere in between. From top officials at the Southern Baptist Convention to Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, Janet Reno's gestapo tactics have been decried.
In large part, the outrage is due to photographs taken at the scene by an Associated Press photographer. The image of a goggled paramilitary outfitted federal agent holding a submachine gun in one hand and reaching for a crying Elian with the other helped crystallize the true nature of the raid. As a result, many have concluded that it crossed the line of acceptable government behavior.
Other critics simply believe the raid itself was wrong, regardless of how it was carried out. In a New York Times editorial, Professor Tribe said, "[Reno's] decision strikes at the heart of constitutional government and shakes the safeguards of liberty." In response to the Department of Justice's insistence that the storming troopers were armed with a search warrant, Tribe points out that "it is a semantic sleight of hand to compare his forcible removal to the seizure of evidence, which is what a search warrant is for."
The most disturbing aspect of the Elian seizure, however, is only partially captured by that famous photograph and Tribe's concerns about a proper warrant. The truth is that this military-style raid wasn't an isolated incident. Over the past few years, police forces have grown increasingly militarized, creating their own SWAT teams and other units that operate while armed to the teeth.
The results have often been tragic. In spring of 1997, the town of Dinuba, California, created a SWAT team. Just a few months later, the unit burst into the home of Ramon Gallardo, awakening him and his wife. But before they could figure out what all the commotion was about, police shot Ramon 15 times. The tragedy is that police were looking for one of his teenage sons. A jury subsequently awarded the family $12.5 million in a lawsuit, and the city disbanded the SWAT unit.
This incident is chronicled in a Cato Institute study titled "Warrior Cops." The study found that 90 percent of cities with populations of over 50,000 had paramilitary units like the one in Dinuba. Police in these units are trained in military tactics to confront an "enemy."
But this training flies in the face of the true goal of police in a democracy - to deal with citizens not as enemies but as those who are protected by the Bill of Rights. The basic duty of police, as servants of the people, is to uphold the Constitution - not try to circumvent it.
The town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, confronted this principle firsthand. In response to several wrongful death suits, the town hired a university professor to study its police practices. After studying the situation, Professor Sam Walker of the University of Nebraska concluded, "The rate of killings by the police was just off the charts ... They had an organizational culture that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalating." To its credit, Albuquerque finally disbanded its SWAT team.
Pressure, however, remains on other cities to adopt paramilitary tactics and weapons. Nick Pastore, a former police chief of New Haven, Connecticut, told the New York Times, "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted. ... I turned it all down because it feeds a mind-set that you're not a police officer serving a community, you're a soldier at war."
Pastore's experience is reflected in the Elian raid. Washington Post columnist Stephen Hunter noted that the weapon used by INS agents was an MP-5, a submachine gun made famous by British SAS troopers and other elite Western military units which fires at a rate of 600 rounds per minute. And Hunter astutely noted that the safety was off during the raid. In other words, agents were prepared to fire. Had the slightest thing gone wrong, Elian and his relatives could have joined Ramon Gallardo as another notch in the barrel of America's obsession with military-style police raids.
In addition to the guns, the menacing uniforms often worn by modern police officers represent a danger in and of themselves. The all-black outfits, complete with helmets and goggles, tap into the psyche of police and their targets. Michael R. Solomon, a professor at Rutgers University who studies the psychology of clothing, says, "Intuitively, or on some unconscious level, whoever designed [the SWAT] uniform is certainly tapping into associations between the color black and authority, invincibility, the power to violate laws with impunity." Garbed as if they are above the law, police can't help but act as if they are above the law.
Sadly, too many of our law enforcement officials are doing just that: acting as if they are above the law, charging into American homes, brandishing submachine guns and threatening innocent citizens. It happened to Elian. It could happen to you. And unless we regain a sense of community among our police - a sense that the Constitution is a shield to protect citizens rather than a sword for criminals to wield and cops to skirt - it almost certainly will.
WC: 857
In large part, the outrage is due to photographs taken at the scene by an Associated Press photographer. The image of a goggled paramilitary outfitted federal agent holding a submachine gun in one hand and reaching for a crying Elian with the other helped crystallize the true nature of the raid. As a result, many have concluded that it crossed the line of acceptable government behavior.
Other critics simply believe the raid itself was wrong, regardless of how it was carried out. In a New York Times editorial, Professor Tribe said, "[Reno's] decision strikes at the heart of constitutional government and shakes the safeguards of liberty." In response to the Department of Justice's insistence that the storming troopers were armed with a search warrant, Tribe points out that "it is a semantic sleight of hand to compare his forcible removal to the seizure of evidence, which is what a search warrant is for."
The most disturbing aspect of the Elian seizure, however, is only partially captured by that famous photograph and Tribe's concerns about a proper warrant. The truth is that this military-style raid wasn't an isolated incident. Over the past few years, police forces have grown increasingly militarized, creating their own SWAT teams and other units that operate while armed to the teeth.
The results have often been tragic. In spring of 1997, the town of Dinuba, California, created a SWAT team. Just a few months later, the unit burst into the home of Ramon Gallardo, awakening him and his wife. But before they could figure out what all the commotion was about, police shot Ramon 15 times. The tragedy is that police were looking for one of his teenage sons. A jury subsequently awarded the family $12.5 million in a lawsuit, and the city disbanded the SWAT unit.
This incident is chronicled in a Cato Institute study titled "Warrior Cops." The study found that 90 percent of cities with populations of over 50,000 had paramilitary units like the one in Dinuba. Police in these units are trained in military tactics to confront an "enemy."
But this training flies in the face of the true goal of police in a democracy - to deal with citizens not as enemies but as those who are protected by the Bill of Rights. The basic duty of police, as servants of the people, is to uphold the Constitution - not try to circumvent it.
The town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, confronted this principle firsthand. In response to several wrongful death suits, the town hired a university professor to study its police practices. After studying the situation, Professor Sam Walker of the University of Nebraska concluded, "The rate of killings by the police was just off the charts ... They had an organizational culture that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalating." To its credit, Albuquerque finally disbanded its SWAT team.
Pressure, however, remains on other cities to adopt paramilitary tactics and weapons. Nick Pastore, a former police chief of New Haven, Connecticut, told the New York Times, "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted. ... I turned it all down because it feeds a mind-set that you're not a police officer serving a community, you're a soldier at war."
Pastore's experience is reflected in the Elian raid. Washington Post columnist Stephen Hunter noted that the weapon used by INS agents was an MP-5, a submachine gun made famous by British SAS troopers and other elite Western military units which fires at a rate of 600 rounds per minute. And Hunter astutely noted that the safety was off during the raid. In other words, agents were prepared to fire. Had the slightest thing gone wrong, Elian and his relatives could have joined Ramon Gallardo as another notch in the barrel of America's obsession with military-style police raids.
In addition to the guns, the menacing uniforms often worn by modern police officers represent a danger in and of themselves. The all-black outfits, complete with helmets and goggles, tap into the psyche of police and their targets. Michael R. Solomon, a professor at Rutgers University who studies the psychology of clothing, says, "Intuitively, or on some unconscious level, whoever designed [the SWAT] uniform is certainly tapping into associations between the color black and authority, invincibility, the power to violate laws with impunity." Garbed as if they are above the law, police can't help but act as if they are above the law.
Sadly, too many of our law enforcement officials are doing just that: acting as if they are above the law, charging into American homes, brandishing submachine guns and threatening innocent citizens. It happened to Elian. It could happen to you. And unless we regain a sense of community among our police - a sense that the Constitution is a shield to protect citizens rather than a sword for criminals to wield and cops to skirt - it almost certainly will.
WC: 857
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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