Previous Post
Next Post

I’ve finally finished reading The Rise of the Warrior Cop and Militarization of America’s Police Forces. And . . . I lost it in the move to the new house. You know the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Biblical weapon of mass destruction gets stored in an enormous warehouse among stacks of uncountable boxes? Like that. But, as Hawkeye exclaimed in The Last of the Mohicans, I will find you! Where was I? Ah yes, “over-enthusiastic” SWAT teams. How about a raid on an animal shelter? The Balko book confirms my suspicion that Americans get far more upset about SWAT teams shooting animals than they do by the fact that cohorts of quasi-military cops trample all over the United States Constitution. But hey, if it takes animal empathy to dial-back the fascists at our door, so be it. At least Bambi’s grandmother (Bambi the prequel) died for a good cause.

Previous Post
Next Post

81 COMMENTS

    • I don’t know what made me cringe worse, a swat team coming after a baby deer or the guy crying and having nightmares about her.

  1. One thing about the enemy, they’re cowards. Any organization in a future resistance movement against the regime, and the enemy will quickly fold.

      • Yes, I think so, unlike in WW I. The problem is Amerikans (sic) may never organize. I prefer a peaceful solution through noncompliance, but I don’t think enough people would do even that.

        • Making the assumptions, and history is full of them, of the inherent weaknesses of your enemy based on their race, or their technology level or their levels of personal committment or courage is a quick way to lose a battle.

          Hitler was evil, his regime forever tainted by mass murder and truly sick human experiments. But assuming the SS or the werhmact were weak willed cowards for following him would get you dead in the millions. Just ask the Russians.

      • “exactly and but” jwm. The Viet Minh finally convinced the Japanese and the then the French and then the US to leave. The Mujahedeen convinced the Soviets to leave. Sometimes the most unlikely enemy wins. Unless, the odds are being figured wrong and you ought not ever place the bet on hired or conscripted troops to carry off what people fighting for their beliefs would stop them from doing, however poor their means.

        These sorts of abuses really might eventually lead to the polarizing event that leads to mass disruption that leads to draconian overreaction that leads to mobilization that leads to revolt.

        The economy will be wrecked, the borders undefended, the government in tatters, civil life will be disrupted to the point that it can only ever return to a ‘new normal’, hundreds of thousands will die violent deaths and more will die of preventable causes such as starvation or for want of medical care. The infrastructure will be wrecked and there wont be any organization or resources to fix it in a timely manner. There will be deep divides between those who lost loved ones on each side that will persist for a generation or two.

        All this because we lack the legislation to prevent the government using military style equipment, weapons and tactics to enforce the most pedestrian, innocent and innocuous violation of the smallest and least meaningful (dare I say absurd and unlawful) regulation.

        We do need crime reducing arms control legislation. We need to legislate when the government (local, state and federal) can use arms to enforce the law. There ought to be a standard indicating when armed force ( to include intimidation) is acceptable against citizens, and a serious penalty to be suffered when such are violated.

        • Exactly – just see the raid on Gibson a few years back. Ignoring the stupidity of the law Gibson allegedly ran afoul of, it was clearly a situation that would have easily been handled by a couple agents without incident. Instead they sent in the SWAT team to pacify a perfectly legitimate and peaceable company.

          The constitution isn’t only being trampled on with regards to activities around guns. They are equal opportunity jackbooted thugs.

        • Um, the Viet Minh had the Chinese and Soviets helping (arms, training, and troops). The Mujahedeen had CIA help (the same, plus cash). So a US insurgency would have who… France?

          Pf course, the EU will step right in to sell us what we need afterwards. For Euros.

  2. I’m from the gov’t, I’m in my SWAT uniform, I’m with a dozen other armed SWAT members and we are here for your super dangerous baby deer.

    Who is the problem, the baby deer or the SWAT. I think they euthanized the less dangerous to society.

  3. How many other other guys read stories like this and get angry, yet nothing is done about it(myself included). One citizen(or are we subjects already) writing a letter or calling a police station to complain does nothing. We need a national organization to specifically fight this matter on behalf of all Americans. Something devoted to only this cause. If this already exists, please let me know.

    • Well, I would think that the US Government and the ACLU are supposed to represent the people BUT that seems to be a huge misconception.

      • “We need a national organization to specifically fight this matter on behalf of all Americans.”
        OMG! The gummint! The ASPCA! No? Oh…

  4. I feel much safer thanks to the jackbooted fascists who are protecting us from fawns. Kudos, coppers. You’re everything we’ve come to expect from American law enforcement.

    What’s truly remarkable is that cops still don’t seem to understand why so many Americans feel that they can’t trust them. Can cops really be that stupid? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.

    • I don’t think they are that stupid, I think they are that deluded. They really are a separate class who feels superior to the rest of us. Consider this, if my neighbor is being a bit loud late at night and I knock on his door to ask him to turn down the radio I’m well within my rights and even behaving like a responsible and reasonable person. If I did exactly the same thing wearing my armor and slung with an ar-15 I’m probably over the line of making terroristic threats. I’m certainly well past being reasonable or responsible.

      Even if it meant that my life might be forfeit, I’d support no external (unconcealed) armor and no long guns (ie no SWAT) unless there is already a violent incident in progress. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the police are perpetrating more violence than the people they are arresting.

      Said another way for clarity, while it is the job of the police to (among other things) confront SUSPECTED criminals (because they are virtually all presumed innocent at the point where police contact is made) it is my job to buy and sell antiques. Would anyone thing it reasonable that I would show up in hard armor with a rifle? Ah, but you say people might resist the police. Sure, and they might resist me, that doesn’t mean I can legally or ought to intimidate them.
      But police officers are in danger of assault! Well, so am I when I interact with the public, deal with people who owe me money or walk around with large sums of cash. Do I get a pass on threat IVa armor and and AR-15?

      If I were suspicious that when I asked my neighbor to turn down his music he might come out shooting is it ok that I toss in a flashbang instead of knock?

      The police are so far out of control that likely better than 1/3 would just have to be let go and replace while the rest underwent exhaustive retraining just to get back to a point where the bill of rights meant something and the atrocities would stop. Incidentally I had to use spell check on ‘atrocity’ since I’ve basically never typed it, that’s how serious I am about the term, these no knock raids, absurdities like using a swat team to confiscate a deer, and the many other documented and too often undocumented abuses of the police on the citizenry are the embodiment of civil rights violations, usurpation of liberty and will of the people, intolerable acts, and in the case where innocent people die real atrocities. The worst of it is, they happen every single day somewhere in our republic, or maybe the worst is that even though they happen like clock work nothing is ever done about it, nothing, nothing at all, period.

      • “The police are so far out of control that likely better than 1/3 would just have to be let go…”
        Then they would cause a crime wave of Biblical proportions, cuz they’d keep their undeclared, unregistered “personal weapons.”

  5. I feel like this post read better in your head than it did on the page, RF. All the internal monologue and Shakespearean asides often make it hard to discern your point.

    Euthanizing a baby deer because you’re not allowed to have one is much like “we have to destroy this village in order to save it.”

    • On an unrelated note, looking at this site at this point is just painful. It’s finally at a point where it doesn’t completely suck, which is an improvement over what it was a couple days ago, but if you compare what it is now to what it was before all the changes (for a reminder, look at TTAK; except for the blue title text, it’s the exact same as TTAG used to be) the current iteration is several large steps down. Going from an 8 to a 2 and then improving back to a 5 is not a net gain. Can we just find a restore point prior to Friday and go back there?

        • And since you brought the subject up. Is it my imagination or has the rate of comments slacked way off since RF and crew has tried to fix something that wasn’t broken?

        • It’s the weekend. Things often slack off on the weekend, especially during the daylight hours.

        • RSS is STILL broken, which may account for a number of posters unwilling to come in via the web. More web hits = more $$$.

    • Robert is only doing what’s expected of educated citizens. No one is excluded from the education process, now that there’s the internet. It’s all a matter of desire and intention.

    • Caught that, too, huh? “If a sheriff does a drug bust, do they call ahead?” Paraphrasing, buuuuut… THE HELL?! Raiding an animal shelter over a fawn is the same as busting a meth lab? Doing “recon” on a shelter? It’s called walking up and saying, “Hey, about that deer we’ve been hearing about…”

      • When the government becomes a hammer,
        everything they see begins to look like a nail.

        There are two ways to deal with this. We either demilitarize these officers, or every officer involved with this raid, is similarly raided. What is the likelihood of these officers doing what they did if say, 15 heavily armed operators with warrants appear out of nowhere, and corral these officer’s and their families for a 3-4 hour long raid. If they think the fawn bust was appropriate, surely they won’t mind if some heavily armed strangers invade their own private property? Are their pets rabies vaccinations up to date with appropriate tags? Rabies is a very serious disease, we shouldn’t take any chances. Any pet without current tags is immediately taken and quarantined. They got a warrant for a fawn, getting one for rabies should be easy. What’s the point?
        If you condone the terror these officers commit, you’ll get more of it. The Nazi’s did what they did because it wasn’t being done to them. If Hitler had done to the Germans what he did to the Jews, they all would have had him taken out and shot. No WW-II, no holocaust. No, we are not the Nazi’s. But we are on the same road they took. Conditioning one group of Americans to freely abuse the rights of other Americans, is the road that descends into fascism.

      • I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an animal shelter in violation of a misdemeanor crime tooling up and shooting it out with the cops over a deer. While it’s a ridiculous and rights violating plan with the drug dealers, it’s simply absurd in this case. I’m starting to wonder how long before the IRS sends out SWAT teams to collect assets in the event of unpaid taxes. That is a much more serious crime than ‘unregistered deer’.

  6. We killed it because it was, THE LAW! Don’t you understand that? It’s, THE LAW! We were also just following orders.

  7. Hmmmm. Lessee, we have reports of a baby deer being held in contravention of state law. We can:

    A) Give the animal shelter a phone call and talk to them about the problem. Then dispatch a single DNR agent to meet with the shelter operator and fill in some paperwork and then issue the proper permits so that the shelter can transfer the deer to the intended animal preserve in a neighboring state, thereby making everyone happy and giving the news a warm, fuzzy story to report.

    OR

    B) Spend several thousand dollars on ground and aerial surveillance then fire up the old SWAT team and perform a dynamic raid on the shelter, detaining everyone at the shelter for over 3 hours, destroy evidence of the raid, find the baby deer, tranquilize the deer and haul it’s limp body out in a body bag and then euthanize the highly dangerous baby deer at an undisclosed location, thereby embarrassing the state, the governor, and the DNR and start a viral internet hate sensation.

    Yeah, let’s go with plan B

    • I’m going with Plan B. I’m getting to the point that I’m in favor of anything that can hasten the demise of the current system, so we can start over. I say that fully realizing that war sucks and I might not be one of the ones who is around to do the starting over.

    • It does almost seem as if they run down a checklist and come up with the worst possible plan, make it worse, and then implement it.

      • You guys are a riot, but you’re also dead on. It does seem like it was almost organized to be a wake up call by it’s very overreach and absurdity. Maybe what we have is an activist SWAT team that is trying to highlight what’s wrong with the system? What? No? You say they are exactly the dumbassed macho morons who could do all this without a hint of irony?

        Makes me think of a joke:

        Cop: Do you know why I pulled you over?
        Motorist: Because you nearly flunked high school?

    • Can you believe what these idiots did to get a search warrant? Jennifer Neimyer should have herself euthanized. What a worthless girl dog.

  8. With all do respect to our LEOs, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s 10 times as many of them as we need. They obviously have WAY too much time on their hands and nowadays they’ve also got way too much cool gear to play with. It’s a colossal waste of our freedom and out tax money.

      • There are a lot of things that go on in this world that I disapprove of and very few of them am I willing to combat by giving up more of my hard earned tax money.

  9. This is just one of so many actions by police that makes the only thing more unsad than a cop eating their own gun is when they are killed by ‘friendly fire’. These are activities that should be promoted and encouraged particularly in militarized swat units until their focke us changes.

  10. Everyone needs a SWAT team. When you have one, then it has to have something to do.

    Whatever happened to the idea of “One riot, One Ranger”?

  11. Somebody said something about those with the tiniest amount of power having the uncontrollable need to use it. Eventually, the American people will grow weary of this treatment.

    • Actually, yes, a .223 /5.56 is legal for deer. I believe a .40 would be as well, as long as a barrel length of 5 1/2 inches or longer is used.

  12. What I find hysterical is all the comments about Obama’s AmeriKa. Yes, he is a walking disaster. BUT please, look at history. The only difference today, from 50 years ago, is the internet. We get “some” information, before it is suppressed.

    This government crap, and jackbooted police tactics have been here since forever. Only a few differences. One, more eyewitnesses with camera’s in their phones. Secondly, the police get to play with their automatic weapons in public.

    Keep in mind who made this all legal. Ever hear of the “Patriot Act”. ALL of our concerned politicians voted for that thing. It took Hitler 6 years to deprive German citizens of the same rights it took our representative government 1 day.

    • JPD 50 years ago this sort of thing just simply wouldn’t have happened. For one thing, there didn’t yet exist a swat team to do it with or a regulation this bat shit stupid.

      Second, as soon as you mention Nazis you lose the argument (Godwin’s Law).

      Lastly the differences in what was surrendered in the patriot act with what was surrendered in Nazi Germany are even comparable, I mean actually can’t be, not order of magnitude. Since there was no ban of political speech, dissenting parties, or firearms in the patriot act while there was in Germany under the 3rd Reich you’re making an impossible comparison. Further, since the Nazis didn’t assign any secret court but rather used brute legislation and open courts to perpetrate their evil it’s difficult to understand the relationship. Then there is the whole the patriot act didn’t deprive any specific group of people of their rights based on their group membership, you know, like the Nazis did to Jews, communists, gypsies and many others.

      On top of this the patriot act has absolutely nothing to do with a state level swat team acting out. Unless you mean the provisions that paid for some of their gear, but I doubt that.

      Frankly your statement is wrong; historically, factually and referentially for any useful purpose.

      • Well, if you ignore the money, tactics, total violation of our rights by every LEO from top to bottom since day one, then yes your head in the sand view of history would be correct. Take the 50’s. Look at LEO’s nationwide. Illegal searches, killings, interrogations, list goes on.

        Even simple Wiki search ( which we know is “santitized” points that out)

        Again, do not take my word. 30 minute historical search will give you a hundred of examples in each 5 year period. Too much to be coincidental.

  13. I’m originally from that part of Wisconsin and I sure am happy they started doing something about those fawns. Those nasty little buggers were the biggest reason I left. Not a place to raise kids. Go job SWAT. Today the world is a better place.

  14. “Only what can be counted counts!” So the agents prevented yet another heinous violation of Wisconsin NR laws. Sounds like promotion material in the world of citizen-paid regulatory enforcement, once the event is summarized in a report stripped of any human detail.

    The supervisory DNR agent clearly cannot hear herself speak. The description by the supervisory agent makes clear that surveillance has become, in her mind, a substitute for decent treatment of citizens. “We have photographs. We will send a squad of heavily armed men. We don’t have to care that it makes you fearful. It is good that you are fearful. We treated you no differently than drug dealers. Why should we?” Seriously, this is an acceptable mindset for state employees? In Wisconsin?

    The DNR agents apparently want to be Drug Raiders, the drug raiders apparently want to be SEALS. Everybody wants to be ‘upgraded’ to some more awesome group. “We’re just like them!” No, you’re not. And citizens aren’t Talibvn, and regulations do not need enforcement by SWAT teams. It is inefficient and unpleasant.

    • Correct me if I’m mistaken but I think you’re an attorney Ropeing? Just for giggles (and not saying it’s not great evidence) but something doesn’t get ‘more illegal’ just because they have pics of it, right?
      (I’m really asking rhetorically to make a point to someone else, though an answer ‘for the record’ would be welcome. Unless of course you’re from Jersey, cause everybody knows that in Jersey anything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught.)

      Seems to me that all this surveillance makes a good case in a civil suit. Assuming (animal rights people) the ‘suspects’ are shown to be unarmed, unorganized, not engaged in violence, not part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy, and lacking any indication that resistance is likely, might not the use of a SWAT team be shown to have been heavy handed and possibly traumatic to some of the detainees?

  15. I’m sure that these rural Wisconsin LEOs (like all hyper-authoritarian cops) are all staunch Liberal Democrats. If we can just get rid of Obama, every local LEO will suddenly morph into Andy Griffith.

  16. Where is all the PITA outrage over this? I’d love to see a link to naked Israeli celebrities being raided by the Wisconsin DNR.

  17. 9 DNR Wardens and 4 deputy sheriffs, I have NO idea what they expected to encounter, but this was an enormous waste of taxpayer $$$ and resources…

  18. What a bunch of macho badasses. If the neighbor is ever attacked by a bunch of bambi’s, they will be well prepared. That team needs their M16s shoved up their sphincters to turn them into popsicles.

  19. Fascists? Nothing like being a condescending dick about it.
    I won’t even waste time concocting a response to a closed mind like this.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here