Originally published at: Police send SWAT squadron after man sleeping in car, still fail to apprehend him | Boing Boing
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local residents were not so pleased that a legion of armored cops with tanks both failed to apprehend a sleeping person, and also that they failed to do anything to protect the schools
It’s been quite the banner week for America’s SWAT teams in that last regard.
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Egad. The Keystone cops have got nothing on these guys.
Christ, what a bunch of assholes!
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ACAA!
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On a scale from bad to ‘profound civilization rot’; how serious is the fact that my two sources for a daily dose of abject incompetence are the Russian invasion of Ukraine and whatever story of the police being tacticool is current on a given day?
The pessimist in me wonders if the reason that they had so much trouble is precisely because he was asleep and only possibly armed; so they had to scramble to find someone who is capable of the ‘polite but alert inquiry’ approach; while if he’d been actually visibly armed they could have just unloaded a few magazines into the car and called it a morning.
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Frankly I was just glad to see that for once the cops didn’t open fire on the guy, even after the potential “threat” he posed by tapping his car into their armored vehicle. The outcome of this interaction could have been way worse. Plenty of precedent for sleeping folks suspected of having handguns getting shot in their cars.
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True, it’s a better overall outcome thankfully. The fact that 20 or so guys with 4 or 5 vehicles could not apprehend a single sleeping man in a car is kinda ridiculous though.
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Yes, but too often car chases turn fatal as a result of cops getting into a “we can’t just let this asshole get away!” mentality even when they don’t even know if the person they’re pursuing committed a crime or posed any threat before the chase started.
Arranging their vehicles in such a way as to preemptively block his vehicle’s escape probably would have been a good idea, and I don’t know why they didn’t, but once the chase was actually underway I don’t fault them for not taking extreme measures to stop him.
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Agreed, but it should never have gotten to that point. Buddy was asleep. All they had to do was open the door and haul him out. Armed or not he wouldn’t have an opportunity to do anything. They could have had 10 guns trained on him to dissuade him from any kind of action.
And, yes, they should have boxed him in first.
Edit: too many 'never’s.
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Did they have probable cause that he was a danger or had committed any crime though, and wouldn’t you want to establish that before opening a private vehicle and putting hands on someone? Even if he did have a gun, which is still unconfirmed, it’s possible that it was legal and that he had a permit to carry the weapon. And we don’t know if the doors were locked either. Busting out a glass window is a big step to take if you don’t know if the guy did anything wrong.
If the car had been reported stolen that would probably establish good cause for pulling him out of the vehicle.
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They started off concerned with his safety, then they were concerned for their own safety.
Hell, I would have just knocked on the window or given him a nudge to see if he was alright. But I’m a Montrealer unaccustomed to people potentially blowing my face off for disturbing their sleep.
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A perfect example of how policing requires quality over quantity. I don’t even have words for this.
Also, why the fuck does El Segundo have a SWAT team. It’s a sleepy borough of west LA, tucked in behind the airport. They have a lovely little classic car museum that I used to go to a lot. Population 16,000
They shouldn’t even have a police department. This keeps coming up in threads lately, but these small neighbourhoods, boroughs, and towns in America that all have their own police departments and their own SWAT teams is so nonsensical. Every inch of America is over-policed to an insane degree.
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Seriously?
I know catalytic converter thefts are on the rise, but owning a sabre saw is not grounds for arresting someone. Sure sounds like they are trying to justify their bullshit after the fact.
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“That’s some good police work, Lou.”
Yeah, especially when there were “numerous” power tools. Which signals to me a guy who works in construction for a living. Or a care stolen full of tools.
I am betting a drill handle or something was poking out and mistaken for a handgun.
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One of the only cop shows I can think of that wasn’t straight-up propaganda for a police/surveillance state was the one about a Sheriff who didn’t carry a gun and who solved most of the problems in his community by talking them out.
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“Sure sounds like they are trying to justify their bullshit after the fact.”
Bingo!
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I dunno, it perpetuated the stereotype of cops being wise, benevolent authority figures.
Dukes of Hazard had it a more accurate portrayal of cops being corrupt and bumbling.
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I saw it as an aspirational depiction of what a cop should be. It certainly wasn’t apologist bullshit for a carceral state where police departments are provided with bloated budgets and military-style hardware.
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Add that to the List of Things That Would Shock and Alarm Me If I Found Out In the '80s They Were True In the 21st Century.
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Fair point, but there were plenty of small town cops beating people with night sticks and pistol whipping with a revolver, and having free apple pie the next day at the cafe for keeping the “riff raff” out of town. Way more cops were like that than like Andy.
IMO - it is all copaganda. It was a romanticized look at policing then, and a nostalgic romantic portrayal now.
But it certainly is quaint compared to the cop shows on TV right now. 
YMMV.
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