#20…I still think Culosi appears to be both a bookie and an optometrist.”

Dave G…both of the above thoughts are yours to make…or to quote…and while I don’t know who you are…and you are entitled to “your thoughts”…it is obvious that you didn’t know my son. The one correct thing you said…is…that you have no evidence of this…but chose to make a blanket…and I might add…incorrect statement aimed at him…regardless.

The FCPD had Sal listed as low risk on their assessment of him…they knew he made his living as an optometrist…that he had no criminal record…never owned a weapon…had no propensity for violence…and was a non-threat; but they chose nevertheless…to send a SWAT team…to intimidate and frighten him…by their excessive show of force…(who by their own admission say they never consider the risk assessment and treat any operation they are sent on as High risk, which in keeping with the FCPD policies, protocols, and training, calls for an officer to be at ready gun with his weapon pointed at the center mass of whomever he is confronting)… while serving him…with a document search warrant.

Sal is not here to speak for himself…and there is only one witness…to what is claimed to have taken place…and that is the officer…who wrongfully shot…and killed…my compliant and unarmed…son. There were other officers present, but they claim that they didn’t see what happened.

Sal was 37…in the prime of his life…and was serving our Fairfax County community…in his profession…as an optometrist…not endangering it…or any of its residents. He was very intelligent…and admired…by his peers…and well thought of…and liked by his patients.

Our family loves and misses him…as do his friends. Life needs to be held in higher regard…it is sacred…unique…irreplaceable…with…or…without a badge.

Mr. Payne…thank you for recognizing…and appreciating those situations…that should have been handled differently…at the very least…with common sense…without putting anyone in harms way…while leaving no margins for error…and heightening the potential…for the tragic…and devastating loss…of precious lives.

May God bless all those souls…who have been wronged…in “isolated incidents.”

Sal’s Mom
http://www.justiceforsal.com

“Surveys conducted by newspapers around the country after one of these raids goes bad have found that police only find weapons of any kind somewhere between 10-20 percent of the time.”

http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/a-drug-raid-goes-viral

I still think Culosi appears to be both a bookie and an optometrist:

“The shooting of Salvatore J. Culosi, an optometrist under investigation for being a sports bookmaker”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/29/AR2006112901416.html

Of course the police take on extra risk. However, they are not martyrs. They have rights to protect themselves in case there are loaded weapons hiding behind closed doors. I also don’t see any reports of police departments destroying entire neighborhoods to bring down mafia bookies or drug dealers.

http://reason.com/archives/2008/12/05/death-by-swat

Here’s the key graf:

A Denver Post investigation found that in 80 percent of no-knock raids conducted in Denver in 1999, police assertions that there would be weapons in the targeted home turned out to be wrong. A separate investigation by the Rocky Mountain News found that of the 146 no-knock warrants served in Denver in 1999, just 49 resulted in criminal charges, and only two resulted in prison time. Media investigations produced similar results after high-profile mistaken raids in New York City in 2003, in Atlanta in 2007, and in Orlando and Palm Beach, Florida, in 1998. When the results of the Denver investigation were revealed, former prosecutor Craig Silverman said, “When you have that violent intrusion on people’s homes with so little results, you have to ask why.”

Furthermore, Culosi made bets with a number of people, but he was not a bookie; he did not derive his income from gambling. He was an optometrist, and, as I recall, he actually lost a fair amount of money on his gambling hobby. He wasn’t exactly Frank Rosenthal.

Finally, aren’t the police supposed to take on extra risk so that civilian lives aren’t put into danger? Isn’t that the whole point of having police? Sorry, but putting civilian lives in danger to protect society reminds me of the old Vietnam War adage about destroying the village to save it.

Also, reading into Sal Culosi, he appears to be a fairly big time bookie. I don’t know anything more about the story and have no evidence of this, but when I think of illegal bookies, I think of organized crime.

Like I mentioned above, I have been trying to find more information out on the subject. So I don’t know what my point of where this becomes unacceptable. However, I think the police need to be appropriately protected when they need to perform high-risk raids as only approved by local judges. Unfortunately, civilian lives will come into jeopardy at times for the greater good of protecting our society.

Not all arrests or warrants are high-risk, but that’s the way they are usually treated by SWAT teams. In the Columbia raid, there was no evidence that Whitworth possessed a gun, but the police simply assumed he did. The best numbers we have indicate that SWAT raids only turn up weapons (that’s guns, knives, etc.) in 10 to 20 percent of cases. (See here: http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/a-drug-raid-goes-viral) How can the rest be classified high-risk? There are examples of cities using SWAT teams to break up charity poker games and arrest people like Sal Culosi, an optometrist who made a few bets on sports. He’s dead because when the SWAT team tried to arrest him, one of the officer’s finger slipped, discharging his weapon into Culosi:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/29/AR2006112901416.html

Shall we have the SWAT team raid offices to break up the company March Madness pool? Would that be a good use of police resources and an acceptable way of ensuring public safety? Finally, at what point does the invasion and destruction of innocent people’s property and in some cases their lives become unacceptable to you?

Per your definition above, I do believe that it is “unacceptably common” for the press to sensationalize unfortunate events.

http://www.theagitator.com/2010/05/14/report-from-the-meeting-of-columbias-citizen-review-board/

We can’t know exactly how often any of this happens because there are no statewide public records outside of Maryland and those only go back a year. However, it seems likely that for every reported episode, there are several that no one hears about for months or years, if ever.

But let’s take the 1 in 1500 number for the sake of argument. If 1 out of every 1500 cans of Coca Cola was poisonous, would it be common to get a poisonous can of Coke? Would it be acceptable? Toyota recalled 3.9 million vehicles over 56 deaths blamed on a stuck accelerator (although, in many cases, it looks like driver error is to blame: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/I-am-not-afraid-of-my-Toyota-Prius-87361597.html), which is a ratio of something like 1 in 70,000. Toyota finds such a ratio unacceptable, and if they didn’t, I’m sure Congress would. However, few politicians worry about the much higher 1 in 1500 accident ratio of agencies over which they exert control. But I suppose that’s close enough for government work, eh?

If you want to argue the semantics of it, I’ll concede that a botched SWAT raid is not “common” in the sense of statistical likelihood, but it is obviously “common” in that it happens on a very regular basis. But either way, the real issue isn’t whether it’s common but whether it’s acceptable, and to that, I answer a resounding “no.”

These are recent examples of SWAT raids gone bad.

I will disclaim this that I am in no way an expert on anything pertaining to law enforcement or military strategy.

Think about the situation in Afghanistan. Basically the term ‘urban warfare’ means that every event is similar to a SWAT raid. It is scary to think that on US soil, in a mostly peaceful environment such as Columbia MO that a man can in about one minute have both his dogs shot and find himself arrested. Similarly, it is amazing that this woman in GA can have this happen to her.

Given the frequency of these ‘everything done wrong’ attacks (which i understand is in question in the comment section), would be scaled on to a level where raids would be happening multiple times a day in the most violent and stressful circumstances.

I dont really have much of a comment on whether anything is good or bad, but I find it interesting how easy it is for things to go wrong on US soil. Problems like these would be terribly amplified in war-time situations over seas.

http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/2010/05/13/swat-killed-my-buzz/

He estimates wrong door raids are reported in the media about once a week, so I will defer to his judgment on that one (but again, plenty appear to go unreported). Balko also gives lie to the idea expressed by Tom that the woman in Georgia will be getting a big cash settlement. It might happen, but historical precedent suggests it won’t and certainly not without a large public outcry.

1) Using SWAT raids for non-violent situations is a problem in and of itself.

2) The shooting of animals in these raids is pretty much standard procedure. Senior editor at Reason Magazine Radley Balko is pretty much the foremost expert on SWAT raids in America, and he finds it so common in his work that he started simply referring to it as “puppycide.”

3) Go to Balko’s blog (theagitator.com) and search for “isolated incident” because that is the sarcastic term he uses for botched raids because they are so common. I don’t know how often they happen exactly, but it seems to come up in the media a few times every week. That no doubt understates the problem because many incidents are never reported in the media.

At what rate of occurrence do you consider these “mistake” events to become “Pretty Common” or even “Rare”.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/01/45-swat-raids-per-day