SWAT Wrong-Door Raids: Are You Next?

If you think working, paying taxes, and obeying the law will keep police out of your house, well, you must not be living in America.

It's happening all across the country: police plan raids on the homes of criminals, from murderers to poker players, and they get the wrong house. At best, the victims are terrorized by paramilitary SWAT, or Special Weapons and Tactics, teams.

Using squad tactics, military weaponry, and raw fear, SWAT teams exist in every large city and in many smaller ones, such as Paradise, California, with a population of 26,000. There was a time these teams were deployed only to arrest high-risk targets, like suspected murderers and barricaded suspects. Nowadays it seems like SWAT teams are called out for almost anything: drug use, gambling, even pornography charges will bring armed and armored police to the scene.

The fear a SWAT team can impart is hard to overstate. While touring New York I stopped at the World Trade Center site, trying to take in what had happened there. I turned to leave and nearly ran into a HERCULES officer's assault rifle. He was gigantic and not entirely human, his face hidden behind a ski mask and a Kevlar helmet.

In SWAT raids, property damage is normal. Nonlethal "flashbangs," used to disorient its victims, can burn carpets and even start fires. Family pets are frequently killed.

Frank and Betty Granger, both in their sixties, had their Illinois home raided after police received a tip that guns were in the house. Doors were broken and windows were smashed, but city workers were there the next day to fix the damage. An officer even apologized to them. This is one of the better stories.

Alberta Spruill wasn't so fortunate. After a bad tip from an informant, a New York SWAT team breaks down her door, flashbangs her apartment, and handcuffs her. She dies from a heart attack. The police had the wrong house. Radley Balko and Joel Berger write that, by September 2006, there had already been "at least 15 mistaken raids" in New York City alone.