At Least They Didn't Shoot Any Dogs

The Whited Sepulchre posted recently about the habit of SWAT teams in Columbia Missouri to break down doors, use flash-bang grenades, and shoot dogs while executing search warrants on people with no prior criminal record in the process of 'investigating' non-violent offenses.

Now, via JammieWearingFool, we hear about the federal Department of Education using SWAT teams and violent-entry techniques to serve a search warrant for past due student loans!?!?!

Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said.

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

"He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there," Wright said.

According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there - Wright's estranged wife.

"They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said.

Wright said he later went to the mayor and Stockton Police Department, but the City of Stockton had nothing to do with Wright's search warrant.

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans.

"They busted down my door for this," Wright said. "It wasn't even me."

According to the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General, the case can't be discussed publicly until it is closed, but a spokesperson did confirm that the department did issue the search warrant at Wright's home.

I wasn't aware that the Dept. of Ed. had the power to issue search warrants, much less mobilize paramilitary units to assist in what is essentially a civil, not criminal, matter. Yet another reason to abolish that bloated, worthless federal agency.

This is so contrary to the Founding Father's notion of limited government that it makes one pause and wonder just how the hell things have come to this. Have we really allowed, over the years, so many of our rights and civil liberties to be eroded?

Evidently so.

I weep for the future...

UPDATE: I should have included mention of the horribly botched raid by the Pima County (AZ) sheriff's office in which fully armored SWAT team members burst into the home of  Jose Guerena, an honorably discharged Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq. After unleashing a barrage of 71 shots at Guerena - hitting him 22 times - the SWAT team then left him to bleed to death on the floor in front of his wife and kids, denying him medical attention for more than an hour (details here.)

While each of these raids are in and of themselves tragic and reprehensible, they are symptomatic of a troubling trend towards militarization of the civilian police force, as expounded on here.