BTW, it’s not OK for SWAT teams to do this to the houses of guilty people either. Not only because they are presumed innocent at the time of the arrest but also because even truly guilty people have their punishment decided by courts and juries. Destroying their belongings more than absolutely necessary for the arrest to be conducted reasonably safely is frontier justice and has no place in a modern society.
And I said reasonably safely because an argument could always be made that any possible measures should be taken to ensure the SWAT team come to no harm. But of course they signed up for that job and while it would be safest to nuke every house with a suspect in it from orbit (or at least blow it up with a tank), then what’s the point of a SWAT team?
