Status symbols for government bureaucracies used to be stretch limos for the head of the department....

....now it is having your own SWAT team.

Questions - Why does NASA need a SWAT team?

Possible Answer - Because the Department of Education has one.

No-Knock Raids on Innocent People.

Reason magazine Mike Riggs interviews the victim of a mistaken SWAT raid on his family:

Earlier this month, I wrote about a raid conducted by Alameda, California police on the home shared by political consultant Alex Clemens, his wife, and their infant child. No one was hurt in the raid. Based off quotes Clemens gave to the San Francisco Chronicle, I speculated that he wasn't bothered enough by what had happened, or nearly happened, to his family: "Somebody should tell Clemens that it's perfectly acceptable to be livid when the cops jeopardize your safety, your family's safety, and your property. Everybody responds to trauma in his own way, but this is just ridiculous."


Boy, was I wrong.

As some H&R commenters pointed out at the time, I shouldn't have condemned Clemens' reaction. Period. It was also wrong of me to assume that Clemens' quotes in the Chronicle article represented the sum of his thoughts on the raid. Had I called or emailed him, I would've learned that he's seen a professional to help him with the PTSD, and that he can't look at his front door without thinking about having a gun pointed in his face. As it is, I learned these things when Clemens contacted me to ask for an apology and a correction. So, I'm sorry to Alex for making so many assumptions, and to H&R readers, too. I'm also happy that Clemens agreed to answer by email a few questions about the raid, which you can read below.

Reason: What were you feeling during the raid? What were you feeling after? What have you felt in the weeks since?

Alex Clemens: It was a surreal and scary experience. I was concerned for my safety and my family's–though if guns are going to be pointed at me, I would prefer that they be carried by law enforcement than, say, a bunch of motorcycle club members or gangsters, since you can usually have a rational conversation with law enforcement. (Though I would prefer to not have guns pointed at me at all.)

I was in shock for a good 24 hours or so, but I have a great doc who is walking me through the expected fallout from a spectacular shock of adrenaline and some PTSD. Talking with my wife, neighbors and friends has been healthy and helpful as well, I think.

Reason: What do you think about the fact that your house was raided by mistake?

Clemens: I have talked with officials at the lead agency on the raid (there were three) about the due diligence they performed before raiding my home. They have been clear that they feel justified in the due diligence they performed; I remain unconvinced that it was sufficient. I think when you're going to be performing a guns unholstered, safeties off, surprise raid during peacetime, you need to get damn close to 100% certainty that you are targeting the right folks. (especially when there is a lag time of more than a week between when the warrant was signed by a judge and when the raid takes place–time was clearly not of the essence here.) They point to a couple things they did that made them feel confident they had the right house; I can, as a layman, point to a dozen records (public and private, but accessible by LE) that should have stopped them in their tracks and made them dig deeper. At present, we seem to be agreeing to disagree about whether their due diligence was sufficient. I am pretty sure I am right, but reasonable minds can disagree...

As a conservative, I instinctively side with the police out of fear that they will be gunned down by heavily-armed thugs.  The problem is that it seems that more and more SWAT raids are not against heavily-armed thugs, but against white collar criminals.  In such cases, it is the police with the guns and the home-owners standing around in their skivies. 

For conservatives with our anti-state instincts, we ought to have a problem with that.

Update:  Here is the reason for the no-knock SWAT raid:

In fact, Martinez police were searching for Sang Ung, 43, who made bail after being arrested in August in connection with an indoor marijuana-growing operation.

And, then, you have to wonder about a few things:

First, how could they have gotten the wrong address?  Did no one think to knock on the door in plain clothes?

Second, this guy was out on bail?  He'd already been arrested. Did that take a SWAT action?  Don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.

From the "It Can't Happen Here" file.

Stockton man assaulted by SWAT team in his own home, handcuffed and held in police car for 8 hours based on a search warrant issued by the Department of Education based on an allegedly defaulted student loan.

Got that?  A swat team enforcing a search warrant issued by the Department of Education for payment of a student loan.

Here's the video.



I was prepared to be skeptical but the papers look authentic and the reporters confirm that the Department of Education acknowledged issuing a search warrant.

Since when does the Department of Education have authority to issue search warrants?

Vox Day sees the end of American democracy in this incident:

It's interesting to see how the education sector is one that is leading the move towards debt-based totalitarianism. Student loans are about the only loans that aren't discharged by bankruptcy, and I tend to doubt that the Department of Education's SWAT teams (!?!) are going to be invading any homes over unpaid credit card debts:

Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said. Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as the officers team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn. "He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there," Wright said....

Wright said he later went to the mayor and Stockton Police Department, but the city of Stockton had nothing to do with Wright's search warrant. The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans.

This raises numerous questions:

1. Why is the U.S. Department of Education permitted to issue warrants or call SWAT teams?

2. Why would the SWAT team assault an individual who is not responsible for the debts?

3. Upon which specific date was America pronounced dead?

If this doesn't convince you that the U.S. Constitution is dead, America is dead, and we are watching the galvanic twitchings of a corpse, I don't know what will. Personally, I'm rather looking forward to the first press conference by the Department of Education explaining why they accidentally killed an old woman who never went to college over the unpaid student loans of some clueless wonder with a useless college degree.