Radley Balko

“He started America’s first SWAT team.”

— Radley Balko

“Police need not announce themselves if doing so would jeopardize their safety, if they are in the midst of an emergency,”

— Radley Balko

“As discussed in the previous chapter, direct militarization has a longer history in the United States but has been more”

— Radley Balko

“Brennan writes, allowing for those exceptions violates the presumption of innocence twice:”

— Radley Balko

We'll all make better choices about diet, exercise, and personal health when someone else isn't paying for the consequences of those choices.

— Radley Balko

“Special Weapons and Tactics,” I said. “Okay?” “No problem. That’s fine,” Davis said. And that was how SWAT was born.42”

— Radley Balko

“In a couple of ways, the Watts riots were the first major incident to nudge the United States toward more militaristic policing.”

— Radley Balko

“The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), which would later become the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),”

— Radley Balko

“have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world. —NEW YORK CITY MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG”

— Radley Balko

“THERE ARE TWO FORMS OF POLICE MILITARIZATION: DIRECT and indirect. Direct militarization is the use of the standing military for domestic policing.…

— Radley Balko

“About twenty years later, the Pentagon would begin giving away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country…

— Radley Balko

“the first real organized policing systems in America arguably began in the South with slave patrols. The patrols were armed and uniformed,…

— Radley Balko

Modern 'public health' initiatives have moved well beyond what could reasonably be classified as public goods. Today, government undertakes all sorts of…

— Radley Balko

Finally, this case should serve as yet another reminder of just how dangerous and volatile these police home invasions really are, and…

— Radley Balko

“Clark wrote that there are common-law exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule known as an “exigent circumstances.” One such exception is if police…

— Radley Balko

“The Court’s controversial decisions spurred a generation-long anticrime backlash that countered its decisions with policies that gave police more power, more discretion,…

— Radley Balko

“What we might call the “Symbolic Third Amendment” wasn’t just a prohibition on peacetime quartering, but a more robust expression of the…

— Radley Balko

“But the effort sent a signal to federal, state, and local law enforcement, in Customs and elsewhere, that marijuana was as serious…

— Radley Balko

Multiple studies, including from the Justice Department, have shown that the guns used in homicides, including the killing of police officers, overwhelmingly…

— Radley Balko

“It was the deployment of British soldiers to colonial cities strictly for the purpose of enforcing the law that set long-smoldering hostilities…

— Radley Balko

The best way to alleviate the obesity "public health" crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health. It doesn't…

— Radley Balko

“Nixon’s dehumanization and demonization of drug offenders had been a (literally) smashing success. Tactics like these had rarely been used in the…

— Radley Balko

“says the thrill of the raid may factor into why narcotics cops just don’t consider less volatile means of serving search warrants.…

— Radley Balko

“Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who had called up more than twenty thousand police and National Guard troops for the convention, didn’t do…

— Radley Balko

“FIVE YEARS OF UNREST AND INCREASINGLY MILITARIZED police actions culminated with America’s very first SWAT raid in the final months of the…

— Radley Balko

“Number of SWAT teams in the FBI alone in 2013: 56         Unlikely federal agencies that have used SWAT teams: US Fish…

— Radley Balko

“Detroit, for example, a new police commissioner took over in 1971 and began implementing a more Nixonian approach to illicit drugs. Chief…

— Radley Balko

“Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on…

— Radley Balko

“The Numbers         Value of the property that Nixon claimed in 1972 was stolen each year by heroin addicts: $2 billion                    .…

— Radley Balko

“FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had made the Black Panthers a top priority and, naturally, had publicly “declared war” on them.”

— Radley Balko

“Law enforcement is just like any other interest group,” Santarelli says. “They’re always after greater power.”

— Radley Balko

Yes, bin Laden the man is dead. But he achieved all he set out to achieve, and a hell of a lot…

— Radley Balko

“When guarding buildings, mark a ‘DEAD’ line and announce clearly that those who cross it will be killed. Be sure to kill…

— Radley Balko

“Using general warrants, British soldiers were allowed to enter private homes, confiscate what they found, and often keep the bounty for themselves.…

— Radley Balko

“The wisdom of limiting SWAT assaults to genuine emergencies was long gone. Across the country, the tactics Gates had conceived to stop…

— Radley Balko

“Mitchell insisted that the very phrase “no-knock raid” was a “catchword” used by people who coddled criminals. Mitchell blamed “erroneous citizens” and…

— Radley Balko

Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on…

— Radley Balko

“law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and…

— Radley Balko

No one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of…

— Radley Balko

“In the summer of 2002, Biden was pushing his RAVE Act, an absurdly broad law that would have made venue and club…

— Radley Balko