Tuesday, January 15, 2008

"Paradoxes and double standards abound."

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > The Drug Raid Paradox:
"This is a common refrain from police in drug raids that turn into shootouts—be it with actual criminals, or with innocent people whose homes were wrongly raided. The middle-of-the-night timing, concussion grenades, and door-busting tactics are necessary, we're told, to catch dangerous people by surprise. But when surprised suspects then mistake police for intruding criminals, we're told that the suspects had to have known the intruders were police. Put another way, we're told these tactics are necessary to bewilder and confuse, but when people say they were genuinely bewildered and confused, we're told to assume they're lying...

By the same token, when police mistakenly shoot unarmed people in these raids, they're generally forgiven, due, they say, to the inherent volatility and dangerous nature of the raids.

Paradoxes and double standards abound."

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