Welcome to the Police State

It's happened again: based on a tip, a local police department used SWAT-team tactics to kick in the door of a private home and invaded with over a dozen heavily armed officers, using smoke bombs and intimidation. The only problem: the tip was wrong, and the person they were looking for wasn't there. This happened in Elgin, IL, two weeks ago. From the Courier News:

Search warrant in hand, perhaps 15 officers with the department's tactical response team burst into the Ann Street home of Frank and Betty Granger about 7:30 a.m., looking for an individual and a weapon. The officers damaged doors and broke windows, scorched a carpet and handcuffed the Grangers, who both are in their early 60s, as well as their son and three high-school-age grandchildren, according to the couple. But the search turned up neither the man nor the gun.

This time the police were looking for a man with a gun. But similar tactics have been employed countless times also looking for 'drugs'.

Adding insult to injury, the police initially refused to allow the wronged homeowners to even file a complaint, and the couple had to go to the City Council to get action:

Outraged by their treatment and the damage done to the home they have lived in for 35 years, the Grangers appeared before the city council to recount their experience and demand action Wednesday night.

"Our civil rights were violated," Betty said. "My grandkids, they were terrorized."

The response from the council was immediate, as members quickly agreed to dispatch building maintenance workers to help repair the home and made it clear they took the Grangers' allegations seriously.

"No one should have to sit for three hours before they file a complaint," Councilman Robert Gilliam said.

The problem is bigger than this one case, or even of the tendency for militarization of our police forces generally. The problem is in the changing dynamic of checks & balances in our government overall, and how that allows for abuse of power. In other words, the problem is with freedom.

In order to fight a senseless 'War' on drugs, we've tolerated horrendous abuses of our civil liberties ranging from such home invasions cited above to limits on how much cash you can carry to even the seizure of cars and homes if so much as a trace of drug is found. In an equally senseless effort to curtail illegal gun use, legitimate gun owners have had to register weapons and seek permission from local police authorities to purchase, where their firearms haven't been outlawed completely. Because of our fear of terrorism, we've allowed the encroachments of the Homeland Security Act, leading to abuses of the FBI using National Security Letters to investigate inappropriately, surveilance of mail, email, and phone conversations with minimal accountability, even 'Extraordinary Renditions' - not to mention the Iraq War.

It all comes down to the simple truth that when you give people power, they will tend to misuse and abuse it without proper oversight and constraint. And when the populace is scared, they will tend to grant more power to government to assuage their fear.

This is a country of laws, and I have no problem with the proper execution of police powers to enforce those laws. But it also supposed to be a country of freedoms, where we look with a skeptical eye on the power and scope of government. In our fear - of drugs, of guns, of terrorists - we have forgotten that we nonetheless maintain a responsibility to make sure that our governmental servants do not become our governmental rulers. As a progressive, I know that goverment can aid in making this a better world - as a libertarian, I know that it should never be the government deciding for itself what that better world is "for our own good".

(Cross posted to dKos.)

Jim Downey