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The
Images Of SWAT Teams In Boston Suburbs Are Utterly Terrifying
In
the last 10 years, American forces have cleared cities house by house
plenty of times. But they don’t usually do that right here in the
United States.
This
video shows a specific example of what it looks like when thousands
of police
and FBI agents descended on suburban America decked
out
in military
gear.
They had orders to clear a “20-block area” of the
neighbourhood, and systematically searched from door-to-door.
The
video shows police shouting at an innocent resident and barking at
him repeatedly to keep his hands up.
Please
enable JavaScript to watch this video.
The
reason for this unpleasant approach was certainly the suspected
bomber on the loose. That suspect had already killed people and
police and seemed more than likely to bomb again.
Even
so, the video has a few activists up in arms.
Forcing
homeowners (now turned suspects) to keep their hands above their head
and go along with the search, the
rights of individuals soon vanished among the highly charged search
for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect.
(emphasis his.)
Katy
Waldman of
Slate wrote
an explainer
saying that under dire circumstances police can suspend 4th Amendment
rights against unreasonable searches. It just depends on who’s
defining “dire” and how they define it.
Waldman
writes:
In exigent
circumstances,
or emergency situations, police can conduct warrantless searches to
protect public safety. This exception to the Fourth Amendment’s
probable cause requirement normally addresses situations of “hot
pursuit,” in which an escaping suspect is tracked to a private
home. But it might also apply to the events unfolding in Boston if
further harm or injury might be supposed to occur in the time it
takes to secure a warrant.
Basically,
the bombing suspect was himself pretty terrifying and arguably posed
an imminent danger to the public.
Under
any circumstances though, house-to-house searches are no pretty
sight, especially in one of America’s oldest cities.
Nate
Rawlings of Time told
a stark story
about the lockdown and how a father and his son encountered one of
these searches:
Police
knocked on the door of James Gillen, a resident of Watertown who
lives four blocks from where the shootout happened Thursday. They
searched his home and joined up with a larger group, and the
30-officers in their tactical gear, rifles at the ready, patrolled
down the street.
As
the SWAT officers left [James] Gillen’s home, his two-year-old son
asked why they were there. “I had to tell him that the police are
looking for a bad guy,” Gillen says. Throughout the long day at
home, “he keeps on asking me, ‘Did they get the bad guy?’”
The rest of Boston no doubt feels the same way.
Boston
Bombing: What You Aren't Being Told
In
this video we are going to demonstrate that at the very minimum the
authorities had prior knowledge of the attack and allowed it to
happen, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Eye
Witness - Police SUV Ran Over Suspect, Dead on Scene and They Heard
NO Explosions
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