Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 11:33:26 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: A SPECIAL REPORT: HOOKED ON SWAT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by aztec.asu.edu id IAA11695Pubdate: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 Source: Capital Times, The (WI) Copyright: 2001 The Capital Times Contact: tctvoice@madison.com Website: http://www.thecapitaltimes.com/ Author: Steven Elbow
A SPECIAL REPORT: HOOKED ON SWAT
Fueled With Drug Enforcement Money, Military-Style Police Teams Are Exploding In The Backwoods Of Wisconsin
On Oct. 5, about 50 miles north of Madison in the peaceful Green Lake County countryside of rural Dalton, the Olveda family was enjoying a quiet evening.
Wendy Olveda, five months pregnant, was on the computer preparing lessons for the fifth-grade class she teaches at Markesan Elementary School. Jesus, her husband, was in the bedroom reading, and their 3-year-old daughter, Zena, was passing the time quietly on a couch.
Suddenly the door burst open and several armed men in black uniforms burst into the home. Within seconds Wendy and her husband, Jesus, were thrown roughly face down to the floor and ordered to put their hands behind their heads.
An officer kept a gun trained on their backs while Zena, still on the couch, watched in silence.
"I could hear my wife saying, 'You're at the wrong address,' but they didn't listen," Jesus said later. "When I lifted my head to say they were at the wrong address, one of them put a knee on my head and ground it into the floor."
It was a textbook SWAT team execution of what's known in law enforcement as a no-knock drug search. The only problem was, the cops had the wrong house. The suspects were next door.
When the police finally figured this out, they rushed through a garage door and ran across the Olvedas' property to the house next door. One officer had to return to retrieve the search warrant.
"This is a very traumatic experience for my whole family," Wendy Olveda said. "I don't know how I'm going to be able to sleep. How can such a thing happen to an innocent family?"
The Olvedas filed a claim for $550,000 against the officials connected with the Green Lake County drug task force, including the Berlin and Markesan police departments and the Green Lake County Sheriff's Department, which supplied the men for the fiasco. The claim was rejected, and now the family plans to take the agencies to court.
Except for the fact that they were not even suspected of a crime, the Olvedas' experience is not as rare as one might think. Throughout rural Wisconsin, squads of cops in black battle dress armed with military-style weapons and trained in "dynamic entry" are becoming increasingly active.
Since January 2000 alone, six SWAT teams were put into action in the state, most recently in tiny Forest County, where only 18 patrol officers serve a 1,000-square-mile jurisdiction with a population of just over 9,000.
A survey by The Capital Times located 83 SWAT teams in the state, 28 of them formed in the past 10 years, 16 of those in the last five.
Since the 1970s, the state's urban centers have been a breeding ground for Special Weapons and Tactics teams. Today there are nine such teams in Milwaukee County alone, and seven in Waukesha County. But most of the new SWAT teams have cropped up not in urban centers, but in the backwoods of rural Wisconsin - places like Forest County and Rice Lake, where populations are small and tax dollars are scarce.
Aware that the term SWAT (an acronym for Special Weapons and Tactics) might scare citizens, most police departments use terms like "emergency response teams," "tactical units" or "rapid response teams."
But SWAT is what SWAT officers call it, 1,200 of whom belong to the Association of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin Ltd., which provides its members with information on equipment and training opportunities.
In the course of exploring the SWAT team explosion, The Capital Times found several patterns:
To sell local governments on the need for SWAT teams, police officials usually talk about preparedness for terrorist incidents or barricaded hostage situations.
But once trained, SWAT personnel are most commonly used to serve drug warrants and make drug arrests.
The federal war on drugs provides powerful incentives for stepped-up police activity, handing out money on the basis of the number of arrests scored.
Some federal money meant for community-oriented policing actually goes to pay for SWAT officers.
Despite the federal dollars, SWAT teams are money losers for the small communities that create them, and some are starting to pull the plug.
SWAT-related mishaps resulting in injuries and accidents are rising along with teams and arrests.
Ask law enforcement officials why they formed a SWAT team and they'll often talk about barricaded gunmen or the specter of terrorism.
"In today's society, you have to watch for terrorist activity," said Sheriff Orval Quamme in Jefferson County, which started its team in 1998.
"It's always important to have the upper hand," says Chief John Johnson of the Muskego Police Department in Waukesha County. "It's like the Boy Scouts - you got to be prepared."
"I think a lot of these trends started in Hollywood in the '70s," said Clyde Cribb, a captain with the Brown County Sheriff's Office, one of the state's larger sheriff's departments, which has fielded a team since the mid-1980s.
"Pretty soon, every little town with a department wanted a SWAT team."
Criminologist Peter Kraska, one of the nation's leading authorities on SWAT teams, has a similar opinion.
"It taps into a lot of masculine fantasies about being a warrior," says Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University.
"Culturally, it can infect the mindset of the whole police department, or the whole police institution. It's insidious."
In his 1997 study titled "Militarizing Mayberry and Beyond," Kraska found that between 1985 and 1995 the number of SWAT teams serving small jurisdictions nationwide increased by 157 percent, and that doesn't include teams with jurisdictions serving populations under 25,000. (Wisconsin has several teams in jurisdictions that are even smaller, such as Forest County, with a population of 9,212; Mukwonago, population 7,191; and Rice Lake, population 2,705).
During the same 10 years, Kraska found a nearly tenfold increase in the use of SWAT teams. By far the most common use - 66 percent - was for executing search and arrest warrants.
"The problem is, when they set these things up, they don't just sit around and wait for another Columbine to happen," Kraska says. "They pretend they have a serious drug problem."
Police officials would dispute that they're pretending, but when asked what they use their SWAT teams for, they talk about drugs.
In Trempealeau County, the Sheriff's Department felt compelled to start a SWAT team last year because of, as Lt. Mike Wineski puts it, "some of the things nationally, and some locally, mostly at the schools."
He later added, "We've seen drug search warrants increase over the past few years."
In Forest County, which officially launched its team in April, Sheriff Roger Wilson persuaded the county to fund a SWAT team after a July 15, 2000, gun battle that ended in the death of two men, one of them Crandon Police Officer Todd Stamper.
Asked what he plans to use the team for, Wilson replied, "Drug searches and stuff."
In Green Bay, where "barricaded crises are happening less and less," according to Capt. Bruce Tilkens, the team still manages to keep busy. "We assist the drug task force on a regular basis."
Lt. Patrick LaBarbera, who heads the Jackson County SWAT team and the West Central Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a federally sponsored multicounty drug enforcement cooperative, said of SWAT personnel, "Probably their most common involvement is drug search warrants."
In Vernon County, where the Sheriff's Office launched a SWAT team early this year, the team has been called into action once. On June 21 they burst into a home next to a day care center and seized 12.5 grams of mushrooms, 0.9 grams of cocaine and 52.7 grams of marijuana.
The teams can also be used to intimidate. Last fall, the Columbia County Emergency Response Team stood guard during last year's Weedstock in Sauk County, an annual event where hundreds of young people gather peacefully to smoke marijuana and listen to music.
Bureaucratic support of SWAT teams reaches all the way up to the federal government, which rewards drug arrests with cash, the latest in military gadgetry and sometimes even an opportunity to train with elite military units such as the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs.
Each year the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance disburses millions of dollars in federal funds to Wisconsin drug task force units, which routinely work hand in hand with SWAT teams. A fifth of that money is calculated on the basis of drug sales arrests, creating a powerful incentive to focus on the aggressive pursuit of drug activity.
Here's how it works. Justice Assistance determines what federal funds are available for law enforcement and allots 20 percent - a little over $740,000 a year - to agencies based on drug sales arrests. That 20 percent serves as a guideline for the Office of Justice Assistance when it determines agencies' actual awards.
Once the money is distributed to the task force, it trickles back to individual law enforcement agencies in the form of reimbursements for overtime costs related to drug enforcement. Police departments can request reimbursement for drug-related activities ranging from a full-fledged SWAT team raid to a traffic stop during which illegal drugs are found.
Overtime costs stemming from non-drug related policing, such as a stake-out for a burglary case, are not eligible for reimbursement.
"From a manager's standpoint, when you're dealing with dollars and cents, it's an easier pill to swallow knowing you're recouping costs through the program," LaBarbera said.
Office of Justice Assistance officials were not able to provide the actual awards because they are grouped in with other federal funding based on crime and population. But the OJA guidelines provide a sense of the dollar amounts attached to drug sales arrests, each of which in theory earns a task force about $153. For instance, Milwaukee County drug task forces were in line for $284,973 in 2000 for the 1,852 drug sales arrests made in the county. That was down from 2,122 arrests in 1999, theoretically representing a nearly $40,000 funding decrease.
But as Milwaukee County's share decreases, rural counties with new SWAT teams are increasing their take. Between 1999 and 2000, Jackson County boosted drug sales arrests from 13 to 57, raising the amount of potential funds available to the drug task force from $1,987 to $8,770.
In 2000 in tiny Forest County - which was still in the process of training officers for the SWAT team it launched this year - authorities made 35 drug sales arrests, putting the drug task force overseeing the county in line for $5,386. That more than doubled the previous year's total of 16 arrests for $2,446.
And 2000 also marked the debut of the team in Crawford County, where drug sales arrests increased from nine to 14. Grant County, which began a team in 1999, increased arrests from 11 to 34. In Juneau County, which launched a SWAT team in 1998, drug sales arrests rose from 37 to 57 between 1999 and 2000. (Trempealeau County, which began its team in 2000, was the exception - it actually saw a decrease in drug sales arrests, from 15 in 1999 to 10 in 2000.)
In fact, the proliferation of SWAT teams in rural Wisconsin corresponds with an increase in drug arrests across the board, including small-time marijuana possession, by far the biggest category. Factoring out the urban sprawl of Milwaukee County, marijuana sales arrests in the state increased from 1,368 in 1998 to 1,650 in 2000, a 20.6 percent increase. Drug arrests for simple marijuana possession reached 12,817 in 2000, an 18.9 percent increase over two years.
In 1994 the federal government stepped up its practice of handing out free military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, making available everything from M-16 automatic rifles to armored personnel carriers. Several departments now possess grenade launchers, which can be used to deliver both tear gas and crowd-dispersing, non-lethal rubberized fragmentation grenades.
Officials with two of the state's newer SWAT teams, in Vernon County and Jackson County, said the $10,000 to $15,000 cost of starting a team is almost completely covered by state and federal donations, either in cash or in kind. Those costs include a 40-hour basic SWAT training course, weapons, protective gear, uniforms, diversionary flash-bang grenades, tactical shields, surveillance equipment and break-in tools for no-knock raids.
The federal government also indirectly funds military-style policing from an unlikely source: the Community Oriented Policing program, which throughout the 1990s has promoted a softer, gentler approach to law enforcement and has funded thousands of new community-oriented police officers.
The two philosophies would seem to be at opposite poles of the law enforcement spectrum, but Kraska says the extra officers hired for community policing are often trained in SWAT operations.
"There's no doubt it's bastardizing the concept of community policing," he said.
Vernon and Jackson counties, asked by The Capital Times to provide detailed budget information about their SWAT teams, both reported using officers funded with COPS grants on their teams.
Despite the federal and state aid, SWAT teams are money-losing propositions for local taxpayers. LaBarbera, who heads Jackson County's nine-man team, estimated overtime costs for ongoing training at about $6,000 a year. Undersheriff Jim Hanson of Vernon County - where the Combined Tactical Unit includes 10 officers from the Sheriff's Office and the Viroqua and Hillsboro police departments - estimated that county taxpayers pay $7,200 and $8,400 a year for SWAT training. He pointed out that local taxpayers also contribute to the state and federal money pools that paid for the team's start-up costs.
"It's still tax money however you slice it," he said.
The costs have prompted a few departments to pull the plug. In Marquette County, where there are only 10 county patrol officers, Sheriff Rick Fullmer disbanded the SWAT team in 1996 because, he said, it was simply not worth the money. Besides the start-up costs - which include a basic SWAT course for team members, protective clothing, equipment and weapons - he said it would cost his department a minimum of $10,000 a year for training.
Fullmer said with Marquette County's narrow tax base - its 2000 population estimate was only 13,885 - the cost is too much, and budgetary concerns would compromise training.
"I said, this is ridiculous. All we're going to end up doing is getting people hurt."
Now if he needs a SWAT team, he can call Columbia County, though he knows of only three instances in his 24 years with the department that the department resorted to SWAT action. Even if he didn't have access to another team, he said, he wouldn't start one.
In Ashland, which employs eight patrol officers and where former Police Chief Page Decker disbanded the team, his successor, Dan Crawford, is trying to restore it.
In both cases, disbanding the teams caused dissension in the ranks.
"I'm of a mind that you should be tactically ready and sound, ready to take care of business when you have to," says Capt. Mick Brennan, who is working with Crawford to reconstitute the team.
Former Marquette County Sheriff Steve Sell has a different take.
"Quite frankly, they get excited about dressing up in black and doing that kind of thing," he said.
If SWAT teams and arrests are on the rise, so is the number of SWAT-related mishaps, including deaths or serious injuries of citizens or officers.
Between 1995 and 2000 there were at least 230 such incidents nationwide, including the 1995 accidental shooting of a Dodge County man as he was being handcuffed during a drug raid.
"All for what end?" Kraska says. "My data show almost all of the time it's for small-time drug cases. I would submit it's not worth the risk."
In the Dodge County case, only a small amount of marijuana was found in the trailer.
The city of Neenah and Outagamie County recently paid a $67,000 settlement for a 1998 drug task force raid during which an officer went to the wrong door. And a Muskego woman who was forced to the ground and handcuffed during a botched drug raid last Valentine's Day has filed a $1.2 million claim against Muskego and Waukesha County officials.
"It's a Catch-22," Muskego Police Chief Johnson says of sending in a SWAT team. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Obviously it's a traumatic thing, if you're a citizen."
You don't have to tell that to Wes Jankowski of Fall River.
On the afternoon of Dec. 5, 1997, Jankowski was awakened from a nap when he heard loud pounding on his door. When he got up to see what the commotion was, the door flew open and he was staring down the barrel of a machine gun.
"It looked like a short Darth Vader," Jankowski said of the diminutive officer wielding the gun, "but it was scary. He stuck an Uzi in my face and threw me on the floor."
The intruders were members the Columbia County Emergency Response Team, which was acting on a single tip from a confidential informant that there were drugs being sold from the house. While the first officer forced Jankowski to the floor, holding a gun to his back, others piled in behind. In seconds, they were in every room of the house, looking through drawers, under beds, in cabinets.
In addition to the 12 men in black battle dress uniforms and Kevlar helmets, other officers were outside at the perimeter, hiding behind trees, rifles trained on the house.
After a search that lasted nearly eight hours, police uncovered 5.1 grams of marijuana, enough for about five or six marijuana cigarettes, and 12.6 grams of hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms, all of which belonged to Jankowski's roommate.
Jankowski told The Capital Times he still has flashbacks from the episode.
"It still runs through my head sometimes," he said. "Especially the door coming open and the barrel of the gun sticking in my face."
Sir:Wendy Olveda asks, in reference to the mistaken SWAT raid on her home, "How can such a thing happen to an innocent family?"
It might be suggested that even the "guilty" should not be subjected to such brutal tactics by police. I must of course enclose the word "guilty" in quotes, because guilt or innocence is not decided by the warrant, nor the police, but by the courts, and no matter what suspicions a SWAT team may have, the presumption of innocence is still supposed to be an inalienable principle of American justice.
In the name of a fraudulent and failing War on Drugs, American citizens are forfeiting the very rights and freedoms that America has long championed, and the SWAT teams which practice such deplorable tactics -- even at the "correct address" -- resemble more and more the henchmen of some fascistic police state that can have little justification for existence anywhere, much less in the United States of America.
Yours,
Peter Webster vignes@monaco.mc Review Editor: International Journal of Drug Policy http://www.elsevier.nl/ Official Journal of the International Harm Reduction Association subscriptions: usinfo-f@elsevier.com nlinfo-f@elsevier.nl _________ Zero Tolerance — a symptom of Zero Thinking ____________
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