Hyrda Lacy

As Radley Balko, most prominently but certainly not solely, has now spent years demonstrating, American law enforcement has become increasingly paramilitary, largely on claims that the drug and terror wars require that police abandon their roles as general "officers of the peace" and community servants (beat cops, patrols) and criminal investigators (detectives) in order to become videogame strikeforces, knocking down doors, busting heads and taking names. So when I read about waves of violence striking police officers, I take a fairly dim view. A phrase twice-repeated in that article: serve an arrest warrant. Which sounds innocuous enough, but which now more often than not involves an armed SWAT team acting out a Call-of-Duty fantasy. Why was a SWAT team storming a house instead of just waiting the guy out? It's not like he had hostages.